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EXCURSIONS    OF  AN 
EVOLUTIONIST 


BY 


JOHN   FISKE 


Willst  du  ins  Unendliche  schreiten 
Geh  nur  ira  Endlichen  nach  alien  Seiten 
GOETHE 

FOURTEENTH  EDITION 


BOSTON 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

New  York  :  11   East  Seventeenth  Street 


lSq2 


Copyright,  1883, 
BY  JOHN  FISKJS. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  TJ.  S.  A. 
Klectrotyped  and  Printed  by  II.  O.  Iloughton  &  Company. 


To 
EEV.  JOHN  LANGDON  DUDLEY. 

DEAR  AND  HONOURED  FRIEND: 

Quarter  of  a  century  has  passed  since  I  used  to  listen 
with  delight  to  your  preaching  and  come  to  you  for  sym- 
pathy and  counsel  in  my  studies.  In  these  later  days, 
while  we  meet  too  seldom,  my  memory  of  that  wise  and 
cordial  sympathy  grows  ever  brighter  and  sweeter ;  and 
to-day,  in  writing  upon  my  title-page  the  words  of  the 
great  German  seer,  my  thoughts  naturally  revert  to  you. 
For  I  know  of  no  one  who  understands  more  thoroughly 
or  feels  more  keenly  how  it  is  that  if  we  would  fain  learn 
something  of  the  Infinite,  we  must  not  sit  idly  repeating 
the  formulas  of  other  men  and  other  days,  but  must  gird 
up  our  loins  anew,  and  diligently  explore  on  every  side 
that  finite  realm  through  which  still  shines  the  glory  of 
an  ever-present  God  for  those  that  have  eyes  to  see  and 
ears  to  hear.  Fray  accept  this  little  book  from  one  who  is 
Ever  gratefully  yours, 

JOHN  FISKE. 

CAMBKUXJE,  October  23, 1883. 


CONTENTS. 


EMI 

I.  EUROPE  BEFORE  THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN          .  .  7 

II.  THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE  .        .        .  .41 

III.  OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS 78 

IV.  WHAT  WE  LEARN  FROM  OLD  ARYAN  WORDS    .  .  109 
V.  WAS  THERE  A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER-TONGUE  ?        .  147 

VI.  SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP      .        .        .        .175 

VII.  HEROES  OF  INDUSTRY .203 

VIII.  THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION    .        .       .        .         211 

IX.  THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM  ....      243 

X.  THE  TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM    .        .       .  268 

XI.  EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION 294 

XII.  THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY 306 

XIII.  A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF       ....      320 

XIV.  IN  MEMORIAM  :  CHARLES  DARWIW    .        .        .        .337 


EXCURSIONS  OF  AN  EVOLUTIONIST. 


i. 

EUROPE  BEFORE  THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN. 

IN  looking  over  any  modern  historical  narrative 
— such,  for  example,  as  Knight's  "  History  of  Eng- 
land "  —  one  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  dis- 
proportion between  the  amounts  of  space  devoted 
respectively  to  ancient  and  to  modern  events.  Of 
the  eight  bulky  volumes  of  Knight,  the  first  covers 
a  period  of  1432  years,  from  Cesar's  invasion  of 
Britain  to  the  death  of  Edward  III. ;  the  second, 
bringing  us  down  to  the  death  of  Henry  VIII., 
covers  170  years ;  the  third  takes  us  95  years  fur- 
ther, to  the  beginning  of  the  Great  Rebellion; 
while  five  volumes  are  required  to  do  justice  to 
the  two  centuries  intervening  between  the  over- 
throw of  Strafford  and  the  repeal  of  the  corn-laws. 
This  is  due  partly  to  the  greater  complexity  of 
modern  life,  and  partly  to  the  increasing  abun- 
dance of  our  sources  of  information.  It  is  true, 


8  Excursion*  of  an  Evolutionist. 

we  have  to  go  back  a  long  way  before  we  en- 
counter an  absolute  scarcity  of  information  ;  there 
was  a  great  deal  more  literature  in  the  Middle 
Ages  than  is  commonly  supposed,  and  it  is  pos- 
sible to  describe  many  long  past  events  with  great 
minuteness  and  accuracy.  Mr.  Freeman  devotes 
the  greater  part  of  a  volume  of  768  pages  to  the 
political  and  military  history  of  England  during 
the  single  year  1066.  But  the  history  during  the 
spring  of  1815,  if  treated  with  equal  thoroughness, 
would  fill  a  good  many  volumes  as  big  as  thisj 
and  this  is  owing  largely  to  our  increased  wealth 
of  materials.  When  we  go  back  far  enough  and 
encounter  a  positive  dearth  of  material,  we  can 
devote  but  a  few  pages  to  the  history  of  a  century, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  earliest  Teutonic  invasions 
of  Britain;  or,  as  in  the  case  of  the  long  ages 
before  Caesar's  invasion,  we  can  barely  say  that 
such  and  such  races  of  men  inhabited  the  island, 
and  we  can  give  little  or  no  account  of  what  they 
did.  This  is  one  reason  why  we  find  it  so  hard  to 
form  and  preserve  an  accurate  mental  picture  of 
the  duration  of  past  time.  It  requires  a  deliber- 
ate effort  of  the  mind  to  realize,  for  example,  that 
the  interval  between  the  proclamation  of  Con- 
stantine  the  Great  by  the  Roman  legions  at  York 
and  the  invasion  of  William  the  Conqueror  was 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.  9 

exactly  equal  to  the  interval  between  the  latter 
event  and  the  accession  of  George  IV.,  or  the 
adoption  of  the  Missouri  Compromise.  We  may 
know  that  it  is  so,  but  in  order  to  make  it  seem  so, 
most  people  will  have  to  stop  and  think. 

The  case  is  somewhat  similar  when  we  try  to 
realize  the  relative  duration  of  the  successive  geo- 
logical epochs  in  the  history  of  the  earth's  crust. 
We  are  naturally  inclined  to  overrate  the  relative 
duration  of  the  later  epochs.  Familiar  as  we 
are  with  the  established  classification  of  periods 
as  Primary,  Secondary,  and  Tertiary,  we  fall  natu- 
rally into  a  habit  of  regarding  these  three  great 
groups  of  epochs  as  substantially  equal  in  value, 
so  that  the  beginning  of  the  Tertiary  period  is 
apt  to  seem  one  third  of  the  way  back  toward  the 
first  beginnings  of  fossil-bearing  strata.  Proba- 
bly in  our  every-day  thinking  the  Tertiary  period 
occupies  more  than  a  third  of  the  space  that  is 
occupied  by  the  whole  recorded  life  history  of  the 
earth,  —  mainly  for  the  reason  that  it  is  so  much 
more  completely  filled  for  us  with  familiar  and 
well-ascertained  facts.  This  may  be  partly  be- 
cause organic  life  has  really  been  more  complex 
and  multiform  since  the  beginning  of  the  Tertiary 
period  than  it  was  in  earlier  ages  ;  but  it  is  also, 
no  doubt,  because  our  sources  of  information  are 


10  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

far  more  abundant.  On  the  whole,  the  geologic 
record  of  the  Tertiary  period  is  much  more  com- 
pletely preserved  than  that  of  the  two  earlier 
periods;  we  see  more  clearly  into  the  details  of 
life  at  that  time,  and  consequently  have  a  more 
vivid  picture  of  it  before  us  ;  and  this  more  vivid 
picture,  as  -is  natural,  usurps  an  undue  place  in 
our  minds. 

The  force  of  these  remarks  will  be  obvious 
when  it  is  stated  that,  in  point  of  fact,  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Tertiary  period  carries  us  back  barely 
one  twentieth  part  of  the  way  toward  the  first 
beginnings  of  fossil-bearing  strata.  In  the  table 
that  follows,  I  have  tried  to  give  something  like 
a  just  idea  of  the  relative  lengths  of  geological 
epochs,  in  accordance  with  the  views  now  gener- 
ally adopted  by  geologists.  Let  us  first  suppose 
the  entire  lapse  of  time  since  the  oldest  Lauren- 
tian  strata  began  to  be  deposited,  down  to  the 
present  day,  to  be  divided  into  ten  equal  periods, 
or  aeons,  such  as  I  have  marked  off  on  the  table 
with  dotted  lines.  Then  the  Laurentian  epoch  fills 
three  of  these  great  aeons,  to  begin  with.  Here 
we  find  (with  the  exception  of  the  Canadian 
eozoon,  the  organic  nature  of  which  has  been  dis- 
puted) only  indirect  traces  of  life,  such  as  lime- 
stone, which  probably  came  from  shells.  But, 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.         11 

remembering  how  soft  and  perishable  are  all  the 
lowest  organisms,  and  remembering  how  consid- 
erably these  oldest  rocks  have  been  affected  by 
volcanic  heat,  we  need  not  be  surprised  at  finding 
the  records  of  life  in  them  very  scanty  and  ob- 
scure. Next,  the  Cambrian  epoch  extends  into 
the  sixth  seon,  and  then  comes  the  Silurian,  which 
takes  us  half-way  through  the  seventh.  Mollusks 
and  crustaceans  swarmed  in  the  seas  of  the  Cam- 
brian epoch,  but  there  are  as  yet  no  traces  of  fish 
before  the  upper  Silurian.  That  is  to  say,  three 
fifths  of  the  whole  duration  of  geological  time  had 
elapsed  before  the  lowest  vertebrate  forms  had 
begun  to  leave  plentiful  traces  of  themselves  in 
the  rocks.  The  Devonian  epoch,  in  which  we 
find  the  first  record  of  insects,  carries  us  half-way 
through  the  eighth  seon ;  and  we  are  brought 
well  on  into  the  ninth  by  the  Carboniferous  age, 
in  which  appear  the  earliest  air-breathing  verte- 
brates in  the  shape  of  frog-like  amphibians.  The 
vegetation  of  this  period  consisted  chiefly  of  ferns, 
club-mosses,  and  horse-tails  with  araucarian  pines. 
Nearly  nine  tenths  of  the  past  life  history  of  our 
globe  accomplished,  and  as  yet  no  birds  or  mam- 
mals, perhaps  no  true  reptiles,  nor  any  tree  save 
the  araucaria  or  the  arborescent  fern  !  With  the 
Permian  epoch  we  reach  the  end  of  the  Primary 


.12  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

period,  and  nearly  complete  our  ninth  aeon,  leav- 
ing for  the  whole  of  the  Secondary  and  Tertiary 
periods  only  a  little  more  than  one  aeon  to  be  di- 
vided between  them.  The  oldest  mammals  and 
reptiles  yet  found  belong  to  the  Trias,  or  earliest 
Secondary  epoch ;  yet  so  many  small  mammalia, 
inferior  in  type  to  the  marsupials,  have  been  found 
by  Professor  Marsh  far  down  in  the  Trias  as  to 
warrant  the  belief  that  mammals  had  appeared 
on  the  scene  toward  the  close  of  the  Permian 
age;  and  no  doubt  the  same  will  prove  true  of 
reptiles.  Some  of  the  footsteps  on  the  Triassic 
rocks  of  the  Connecticut  Valley  are  probably 
footsteps  of  great  struthious  birds  ;  but  the  oldest 
bird  actually  known  belongs  to  the  upper  Juras- 
sic strata.  Throughout  the  Secondary  period  the 
real  lords  of  the  creation  were  the  giant  reptiles, 
stalking  over  the  earth,  splashing  through  the  sea, 
and  flying  on  swift  bat-like  wing  overhead.  Of 
these  innumerable  "dragons  of  the  prime,"  the 
iguanodon,  from  fifty  to  seventy  feet  in  length, 
used  to  be  supposed  the  largest ;  but  Professor 
Marsh  has  lately  discovered  the  atlantosaurus  of 
Colorado,  nearly  one  hundred  feet  in  length  and 
thirty  feet  in  height,  —  the  largest  land  animal  aa 
yet  known.  The  mammals  contemporary  with 
these  monsters  seem  to  have  been  mostly  small 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.        13 


H 

Recent 

H 

*"• 

Pleistocene. 

H 

Pliocene. 

Mammals  dominant. 

• 

Miocene. 

H 

Eocene. 

10. 

>3 

M 

3 

d 

Cretaceous. 
Jurassic. 

Reptiles  dominant. 

E 

H 

Triassic. 

Earliest  birds. 

co 

j 

Earliest  mammals  and  reptiles. 

9. 

Permian. 

Earliest  batrachians. 

8. 

M 

Carboniferous. 

7. 

• 

Devonian. 

Earliest  insects. 
Earliest  fishes. 

6. 

- 

Silurian. 

5. 

*.' 

Cambrian. 

4. 

* 

Earliest  mollusks  and  crustaceans. 

3. 

ii 

Eozoon  ? 

2. 

PH 

Laurentian. 

Indirect  traces  of  life. 

1. 

14  Excursion*  of  an  Evolutionist. 

insect-eating  marsupials ;  and  the  forests  through 
which  they  roamed  consisted  mainly  of  palms, 
tree-ferns,  and  pines.  In  the  Cretaceous  epoch 
such  deciduous  trees  as  the  oak  and  walnut  had 
appeared  on  the  scene,  and  the  great  reptiles  had 
become  less  numerous.  But  it  is  not  until  we 
enter  the  Tertiary  period,  half-way  through  our 
tenth  aeon  of  geological  time,  that  the  face  of  the 
earth,  with  deciduous  trees  and  flowering  herbs, 
and  mammals  dominant  in  the  animal  world, 
could  have  begun  to  assume  anything  even  dis- 
tantly resembling  the  aspect  under  which  we 
know  it.  Yet  if  we  could  be  suddenly  taken 
back,  and  permitted  to  inspect  a  landscape  of  the 
earliest  Tertiary  epoch,  we  should  probably  be  far 
more  forcibly  struck  with  the  differences  than 
with  the  points  of  resemblance. 

In  this  succinct  view  I  have  supposed  the  whole 
of  the  life  history  of  our  planet  to  be  arbitrarily 
divided  into  ten  equal  periods.  What,  it  may  be 
asked,  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  actual  du- 
ration of  one  of  these  aeons  ?  I  am  well  aware 
that  to  such  a  question  no  definite  answer  can 
be  given.  The  geologist  deals  only  with  relative, 
not  with  absolute,  quantities  of  time :  he  can 
only  say  that  the  time  has  been  long  enough  for 
a  certain  enormous  amount  of  work  to  be  per- 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.         15 

formed,  but  he  has  nothing  with  which  to  meas- 
ure its  duration  in  years.  Nevertheless,  while 
fully  admitting  all  this,  one  may  perhaps  venture 
to  give  a  provisional  answer  for  a  provisional  pur- 
pose. For  the  present  it  will  be  enough  to  recall 
Sir  William  Thomson's  ingenious  speculations  as 
to  the  limits  of  the  antiquity  of  life  upon  the 
earth.  Reasoning  from  the  sources  of  the  sun's 
heat,  and  from  the  length  of  time  which  it  would 
take  a  body  like  the  earth  to  cool  so  as  to  pro- 
duce the  present  increment  of  temperature  as  we 
go  beneath  the  surface,  Sir  William  Thomson 
concludes  that  the  crust  of  the  earth  cannot  pos- 
sibly have  existed  in  the  solid  state  for  more  than 
400,000,000  years,  and  in  all  probability  has  not 
been  solidified  and  in  fit  condition  for  the  sup- 
port of  vegetable  and  animal  life  for  more  than 
100,000,000  or  200,000,000  years.  This  conclu- 
sion is  largely  speculative,  including  several  data 
of  which  our  knowledge  is  far  from  complete,  and 
it  is  of  course  extremely  indefinite.  It  makes  a 
good  deal  of  difference  whether  life  has  existed 
on  the  earth  for  one  hundred  million  years  or 
for  two  hundred  millions,  since  one  period  is  just 
twice  as  long  as  the  other.  Still,  in  spite  of 
this  indefiniteness,  there  is  a  growing  disposition 
among  geologists  to  accept  Sir  William  Thorn- 


16  Excursion*  of  an  Evolutionist. 

son's  estimate,  as  showing  at  least  the  order  of 
magnitudes  with  which  the  geological  chronol- 
oger  must  deal.  That  is  to  say,  while  it  may  not 
be  clear  whether  life  has  existed  for  one  or  for 
two  hundred  millions  of  years,  it  is  not  at  all 
probable  that  it  has  existed  for  a  thousand  mill- 
ions or  for  any  greater  period.  Even  this  amount 
of  limitation  is  of  some  value  as  giving  definite 
shape  to  our  ideas,  and  as  reminding  us  that  ge- 
ologists who  have  habitually  reasoned  as  if  there 
were  an  infinite  fund  of  past  time  at  their  dis- 
posal have  probably  been  in  error.  Provided  we 
do  not  forget  that  Sir  William  Thomson's  con- 
clusion contains  more  or  less  that  is  hypothet- 
ical, it  is  well  enough  to  adopt  it  provisionally ; 
and  I  shall  do  so  here.  Of  the  ten  asons,  then, 
into  which  I  have  supposed  geological  time  to  be 
divided,  we  will  suppose  that  each  is  about  ten 
million  years  in  duration ;  bearing  in  mind  that, 
while  it  is  highly  improbable  that  the  lapse  of 
time  has  been  very  much  less  than  this,  it  may 
not  improbably  have  been  considerably  greater. 
According  to  this,  the  minimum  antiquity  for  the 
beginning  of  the  Eocene  period  would  be  about 
five  million  years. 

If  these  periods  seem  short  in  comparison  with 
the  enormous  quantity  of  work  that  has  been  done, 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.        17 

both  in  the  tearing  down  and  rebuilding  of  the 
earth's  crust  and  in  the  modification  of  the  forms 
of  animals  and  vegetables,  it  is  no  doubt  largely 
due  —  as  both  Mr.  Darwin  and  Mr.  Croll  have 
reminded  us  —  to  the  fact  that  it  is  almost  im- 
possible for  us  to  frame  an  adequate  conception  of 
what  is  meant  by  a  million  years.  We  are  wont 
to  use  these  great  arithmetical  figures  glibly,  and 
without  comprehending  their  import.  Mr.  Croll 
has  done  something  to  help  us  in  this  matter. 
"Here  is  one  way,"  he  says,  "of  conveying  to 
the  mind  some  idea  of  what  a  million  of  years 
really  is.  Take  a  narrow  strip  of  paper,  an  inch 
broad  or  more,  and  83  feet  4  inches  in  length,  and 
stretch  it  along  the  wall  of  a  large  hall,  or  round 
the  walls  of  an  apartment  somewhat  over  20  feet 
square.  Recall  to  memory  the  days  of  your  boy- 
hood, so  as  to  get  some  adequate  conception  of 
what  a  period  of  a  hundred  years  is.  Then  mark 
off  from  one  of  the  ends  of  the  strip  ^  of  an 
inch.  The  ^  of  the  inch  will  then  represent 
one  hundred  years,  and  the  entire  length  of  the 
strip  a  million  of  years.  It  is  well  worth  making 
the  experiment,  just  in  order  to  feel  the  striking 
impression  that  it  produces  on  the  mind."  Mr. 
Croll  further  reminds  us  that  if  we  could  see  side 
by  side  a  million  of  years  as  represented  in  figures 


18  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

and  a  million  of  years  as  represented  in  geological 
work,  our  respect  for  a  unit  with  six  ciphers  after 
it  would  be  notably  increased.  "  Could  we  stand 
upon  the  edge  of  a  gorge  a  mile  and  a  half  in 
depth,  that  had  been  cut  out  of  the  solid  rock  by 
a  tiny  stream,  scarcely  visible  at  the  bottom  of 
this  fearful  abyss,  and  were  we  informed  that  this 
little  streamlet  was  able  to  wear  off  annually  only 
^  of  an  inch  from  its  rocky  bed,  what  would  our 
conceptions  be  of  the  prodigious  length  of  time 
that  this  stream  must  have  taken  to  excavate  the 
gorge  ?  We  should  certainly  feel  startled  when, 
on  making  the  necessary  calculations,  we  found 
that  the  stream  had  performed  this  enormous 
-  amount  of  work  in  something  less  than  a  million 
of  years."  1 

Now  all  the  fossil-bearing  rocks  on  the  globe 
have  been  formed  from  the  sediment  brought 
down  by  rivers  to  the  sea,  and  this  sediment  has 
been  worn  off  from  the  hills  and  valleys  and 
plains  of  ancient  continents.  In  recent  years  it 
has  been  attempted  to  calculate  the  amounts  of 
sediment  worn  off  by  various  great  rivers  from 
the  surface  of  the  regions  drained  by  them  ;  and 
the  results  are  very  interesting  and  instructive. 
The  Mississippi,  for  example,  draining  a  country 

»  Croll,  Climate  and  Time,  page  327. 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.         19 

with  scanty  rainfall,  and  having  its  sources  in  the 
Alleghanies  and  the  Rocky  Mountains,  where 
there  are  no  glaciers,  performs  its  work  of  denuda- 
tion slowly.  The  Mississippi  wears  off  from  the 
whole  immense  area  drained  by  it  about  one  foot 
in  6,000  years.  While  the  Po,  on  the  other 
hand,  having  its  sources  in  the  glaciers  of  the 
Alps,  works  with  great  rapidity,  and  lowers  the 
area  drained  by  it  at  the  rate  of  one  foot  in  729 
years.  The  mean  rate  of  denudation  over  the 
globe  seems  to  be  not  far  from  one  foot  in  3,000 
years.  Now  at  this  rate,  and  from  the  action  of 
rivers  alone,  it  would  take  only  two  million  years 
to  wear  the  whole  existing  continent  of  Europe, 
with  all  its  huge  mountain  masses,  down  to  the 
sea-level,  while  North  America,  in  similar  wise, 
would  be  washed  away  in  less  than  three  millions. 
But  while  the  raindrops,  rushing  in  rivers  to 
the  sea,  are  thus  with  tireless  industry  working 
to  obliterate  existing  continents,  their  efforts  arc 
counteracted,  here  and  there,  and  with  more  or 
less  success,  by  slow  upward  thrusts  or  pulsations 
from  the  earth's  interior,  which  gradually  raise 
the  floors  of  continents.  The  general  result  of 
the  struggle  has  been  that,  ever  since  the  earliest 
geological  periods,  the  surfaces  of  the  great  con- 
tinents now  existing  have  been  subject  to  irregular 


20  ^Excursion*  qf  an  Evolutionist, 

oscillations  ;  now  partially  or  almost  entirely  dis- 
appearing beneath  the  sea,  now  recovering  ground 
as  archipelagoes,  or  rising  high  and  dry  to  great 
elevations,  as  in  the  case  of  Africa.  The  oscilla- 
tions have  not  ordinarily  exceeded  from  6,000  to 
10,000  feet  in  vertical  extent.  There  is  no  reason 
for  supposing  that  the  general  relative  positions 
of  the  great  continents  and  great  oceans  have 
altered  at  all  since  the  beginning  of  the  Laureu- 
tian  period.  Since  life  begun  on  the  earth  there 
is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  bottoms  of  the 
stupendous  abysses  which  hold  the  waters  of  the 
Atlantic,  the  Pacific,  and  the  Indian  oceans  have 
ever  been  raised  up  so  as  to  become  dry  land. 
Once  geologists  thought  otherwise,  and  land  was 
turned  into  sea  and  sea  into  land,  by  facile  the- 
orizers,  as  often  as  it  was  supposed  to  be  neces- 
sary to  account  for  the  distribution  of  certain  liz- 
ards or  squirrels,  or  for  changes  in  climate,  such 
as  have  left  marks  behind  in  many  parts  of  the 
earth.  The  greatest  physical  geologists  now  liv- 
ing, however,  —  such  as  Mr.  Croll  and  the  brothers 
Geikie,  —  are  convinced  that  there  has  been  Ho 
considerable  change  in  the  positions  of  the  great 
oceans  from  the  very  beginning ;  and  this  view  is 
ably  sustained  by  Mr.  Wallace  —  who  is  probably 
the  highest  living  authority  on  the  distribution  of 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.         21 

plants  and  animals  —  in  his  profound  and  fascinat- 
ing treatise  on  "  Island  Life,"  lately  published. 

Though  the  general  relative  positions  of  deep 
«ea  and  continent  have  not  altered,  however,  there 
have  been  frequent  and  striking  changes  in  the 
superficial  contour  of  land  and  sea.  Every  con- 
tinent has  been  several  times  wholly  or  in  part 
submerged,  while  shallow  portions  of  what  is  now 
sea-bottom  have  been  thrust  up  high  and  dry ;  and 
in  this  way  the  climate  and  the  mutual  relations 
of  floras  and  faunas  have  been  variously  and  vast- 
ly affected.  Thus,  during  the  Silurian  period,  the 
dry  land  of  Europe  lay  mostly  in  the  north,  over 
Finland,  Scandinavia,  and  the  German  Ocean, 
covering  also  the  British  Islands,  and  stretching 
more  than  two  hundred  miles  out  into  the  Atlan- 
tic. The  central  and  southern  parts  of  Europe 
were  then  covered  by  a  shallow  sea,  with  islands 
on  the  sites  of  Bavaria  and  Bohemia.  The  dura- 
tion of  this  state  of  things  may  be  dimly  imag- 
ined when  we  consider  the  enormous  quantity  of 
sediment  worn  off  from  this  northern  continent, 
and  now  constituting  the  Silurian  rocks  of  Europe. 
If  all  this  sediment  were  to  be  arranged  in  a  Ion* 
gitudinal  pile,  according  to  Professor  Archibald 
Geikie,  it  would  make  a  mountain  ridge  1,800 
miles  long,  33  miles  wide,  and  somewhat  higher 


22  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

than  Mont  Blanc.  At  the  close  of  this  long  period 
ridges  of  land  had  begun  to  appear  on  the  sites  of 
Spain  and  Switzerland.  By  the  Carboniferous 
period  the  central  parts  of  Europe  had  risen  so  as 
to  form  an  archipelago  of  low  islands,  surrounded 
by  lagoons  and  salt  marshes,  covered  with  dense 
jungles  of  ferns  and  club-mosses.  On  the  islets 
grew  thick  forests  of  pine,  and  as  repeated  epochs 
of  submergence  brought  all  this  teeming  vegeta- 
tion under  water,  it  became  covered  with  detritus 
of  mud  and  sand  from  the  northern  highlands, 
and  in  this  way  was  preserved  to  form  the  coal- 
beds  of  Europe.  By  the  Triassic  period  we  find 
the  general  elevation  of  Europe  increased,  so  that 
instead  of  an  archipelago  lying  amid  lagoons  we 
have  a  continent  thickly  dotted  over  with  salt 
lakes  ;  but  in  the  next  or  Jurassic  period  the 
whole  centre  of  the  continent  was  laid  under 
water  again.  The  extent  and  shape  of  the  Euro- 
pean sea  of  the  Cretaceous  period  are  indicated 
by  the  extent  of  the  chalk  which  was  formed  on 
its  floor,  and  of  which  Professor  Huxley  has  given 
such  a  graphic  account  in  his  lecture  "On  a  Piece 
of  Chalk."1  The  greater  part  of  Europe  might 
then  have  been  called  a  "  Mediterranean  Sea," 
extending  from  England  far  into  central  Asia. 

1  Huxley,  Lay  Sermons,  pp.  102-222. 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.         23 

The  western  highlands  of  Scotland  remained 
above  water,  but  Bohemia,  Switzerland,  Spain, 
and  the  Caucasus  seem  to  have  been  submerged, 
or  reduced  to  islands.  Still  further  submergence, 
occurred  during  the  Eocene  period,  and  this  in 
turn  was  followed  by  a  long  series  of  elevations, 
resulting  in  something  like  the  configuration  of 
Europe  as  we  know  it.  Late  in  the  Eocene  period 
the  Pyrenees,  Apennines,  Alps,  Carpathians,  and 
Caucasus  had  risen  to  their  present  or  even  to 
higher  altitudes.  While  an  inland  sea  flowed 
over  the  Netherlands  and  Normandy,  the  rest  of 
Gaul  was  dry  land,  and  at  its  northwestern  ex- 
tremity was  joined  to  Britain.  The  British  Isl- 
ands, in  turn,  were  joined  to  each  other  and  to 
Scandinavia  and  Spitzbergen,  as  also  to  Iceland 
and  Greenland.  If  Columbus  had  lived  in  those 
days,  he  could  thus  have  walk'ed  on  solid  land  all 
the  way  from  Spain  to  the  New  World. 

Two  immediate  consequences  of  this  great  up- 
raising of  land  made  the  Eocene  period  an  era  of 
singular  interest  in  the  history  of  the  European 
continent.  The  first  was  the  invasion  of  Europe 
by  placental  mammals,  which  speedily  supplanted 
the  lower  forms  that  had  preceded  them.  The 
second  was  the  immigration  of  deciduous  trees 
from  the  polar  regions.  Before  the  Cretaceous 


24  Ercur9ion9  of  an  Evolutionist. 

period  no  such  trees  had  been  known  in  any 
part  of  the  earth,  and  it  is  the  opinion  of  Count 
Saporta  that  the  habit  of  dropping  the  leaves 
was  evolved  in  adaptation  to  the  extreme  differ- 
ences between  summer  and  winter  temperatures 
which  characterized  the  polar  regions.  However 
that  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  during  the  Eocene 
and  Miocene  periods  deciduous  trees  and  shrubs 
advanced  from  Greenland  and  Spitsbergen  into 
Europe,  and  rapidly  covered  the  face  of  the 
country,  evolving  gradually  a  great  diversity  of 
forms.  By  the  middle  Eocene,  along  with  cy- 
presses, pines  and  yews,  fan-palms  and  pandanus 
and  cactus  of  giant  size,  the  oak  fand  the  elm,  the 
maple,  willow,  beech,  and  chestnut,  as  well  as  the 
gum  and  bread-fruit  trees,  flourished  in  Britain. 
The  climate  of  western  and  central  Europe  was 
tropical,  as  is  shown  both  by  the>  abundance  of 
palms  and  by  the  presence  of  crocodiles  and 
alligators  in  large  numbers,  while  the  mollusks 
were  such  as  are  now  found  only  in  tropical 
waters. 

But  the  most  interesting  feature  of  Eocene 
Europe  was  the  peculiar  character  of  its  mamma- 
lian fauna.  At  first  we  find  marsupials,  and  car- 
nivora  with  marsupial  affinities,  showing  that 
the  order  of  carnivora  was  then  only  beginning  to 


Europe  Iqfore  the  Arrival  of  Man*        25 

be  evolved.  Afterward  came  such  creatures  as 
the  anchitherium,  the  ancestor  of  the  horse,  in 
general  aspect  somewhere  between  a  Shetland 
pony  and  a  pig,  and  with  three  separate  hoofs  on 
each  foot.  There  were  also  the  anoplotheria,  or 
common  ancestral  forms  of  antelopes  and  deer,  as 
yet  without  horns  or  antlers.  The  highest  order 
of  mammals,  the  Primates,  —  including  man,  ape, 
and  lemur,  —  was  then  represented  by  the  adapis 
of  the  Paris  basin,  the  necrolemur  of  southern 
France,  and  the  coenopithecus  of  Switzerland. 
Now  none  of  these  Eocene  primates  answered  to 
any  living  genus  of  lemur,  though  the  lemurs  are 
the  least  specialized  of  primates  now  existing ; 
but  all  these  Eocene  primates  showed  signs  of 
relationship,  in  one  way  or  another,  to  the  hoofed 
quadrupeds  living  at  that  time,  which,  asi  we 
must  not  forget,  were  only  on  the  way  toward 
becoming  hoofed  quadrupeds  such  as  we  know. 
Cousinship,  however  remote,  between  such  ex- 
tremely specialized  creatures  as  the  horse  and  his 
rider  seems  odd  to  think  of;  yet  the  lemnroids 
of  the  Eocene  furnish  the  link.  And  it  is  inter- 
esting to  remember  that,  owing  to  the  closeness 
of  relationship,  the  lemuroid  adapts  was  actually 
mistaken  by  Cuvier  for  an  anoplotherium,  or 
primitive  antelope-deer.  Of  all  anatomical  con- 


20  ^Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

trasts,  what  can  be  greater  than  the  contrast  be- 
tween a  solid  hoof  and  the  flexible  five-fingered 
hand  of  a  Rubinstein  ?  Yet  the  Eocene  great- 
uncle  of  our  modern  pianists  could  be  mistaken 
for  his  contemporary  great-uncle  or  great  grand- 
father of  our  hoofed  quadrupeds !  And  this  in- 
stance is  but  one  fair  sample  out  of  many  of  the 
changes  which  the  last  five  or  six  million  years 
have  wrought.  Speaking  generally,  it  may  be 
said  that  in  the  Eocene  age  there  were  carniv- 
ora,  and  there  were  ungulata,  and  there  were 
primates ;  but  these  orders  were  not  so  clearly 
distinguished  from  each  other  as  they  are  to-day, 
and  they  were  not  so  clearly  distinguished  from 
other  orders,  such  as  the  rodents  and  insectivora, 
while  in  many  cases  they  had  not  ceased  to  bear 
the  marks  of  their  marsupial  ancestry.  Or,  to 
put  the  case  in  another  way,  in  the  Eocene  period 
you  have  an  instance  of  hoofed  quadruped,  but 
you  find  no  instance  of  any  such  special  form 
as  horse  or  deer  or  camel;  you  find  carnivora, 
but  you  do  not  find  a  clear  instance  of  felis  or 
cants  or  ursus,  —  not  even  of  hyaena,  an  earlier 
type  than  either  of  the  others  ;  and  you  find 
primates,  but  among  these  there  is  nothing  yet  so 
clearly  distinguished  as  a  monkey.  In  short,  the 
present  upecies  or  genera  of  mammals  had  not 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.        27 

come  into  existence  in  the  Eocene  period,  but  only 
the  present  orders  and  some  of  the  present  fam- 
ilies ;  and  even  the  orders  were  not  clearly  dis- 
tinct from  one  another,  as  they  are  at  present ; 
but  they  were  closely  interlocked,  very  much  as 
species  are  at  present.  In  other  words,  the  whole 
class  of  mammals  in  the  Eocene  age  was  far  less 
highly  specialized  than  it  is  at  the  present  time. 

From  these  premises  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  ar- 
gues, with  convincing  force,  that  man  could  not 
possibly  have  existed  in  Europe,  and  probably 
nowhere  on  the  earth,  during  the  Eocene  period. 
At  a  time  when  the  order  of  ungulates  had  not 
clearly  de^uoped  the  distinction  between  camels 
and  pigs  and  horses,  and  when  the  order  of  pri- 
mates was  only  just  beginning  to  be  distinguished 
from  other  orders,  so  that  Cuvier  could  even  mis- 
take a  primate  for  an  ungulate,  —  at  such  a  time 
was  it  at  all  likely  that  man,  the  most  highly  spe- 
cialized of  all  primates,  or  of  all  animals,  could 
have  existed  ?  Obviously,  he  could  not  have  ex- 
isted at  such  a  time.  The  supposition  is  absurd 
on  the  face  of  it.  As  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  says, 
"  to  seek  for  highly  specialized  man  in  a  fauna 
where  no  living  genus  of  placental  mammal  was 
present  would  be  an  idle  and  hopeless  quest." 

Coming  to  the  Miocene  age,  we  find  traces  of 


28  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

extensive  submergences  of  parts  of  the  European 
continent,  followed  by  reelevatiens.  Consider- 
able portions  of  Gaul  and  Italy  were  laid  under 
water,  and  at  one  time  the  whole  basin  of  the 
Danube  was  covered  by  a  sea  which  connected 
with  the  Mediterranean  near  Berae,  thus  reduc- 
ing Switzerland  and  Italy  to  an  archipelago.  The 
Alps,  however,  seem  to  have  maintained  a  rela- 
tive height  as  great  as  that  of  to-day,  in  compari- 
son with  the  lands  about  them.  The  elevated 
position  which  Britain  had  occupied  in  the  Eocene 
age  seems  to  have  been  kept  up  during  the  Mio- 
cene. The  whole  of  Britain  and  Ireland,  with 
the  English  and  Irish  channels,  the  German 
Ocean,  and  the  Atlantic  ridge  between  Scotland 
and  Greenland,  stood  at  an  average  of  nearly 
3,000  feet  higher  than  they  do  to-day,  so  that 
the  whole  region  remained  dry  land,  and  Gaul 
was  still  joined  in  this  way  to  Scandinavia  and 
North  America.  Above  this  high  level  the  Scot- 
tish Highlands  and  the  Welsh  peaks  rose  to  a 
height  of  some  7,000  feet,  having  since  been  worn 
down  to  half  that  height  by  rain  and  ice.  Many 
of  these  great  mountains,  thus  standing  nearly 
as  high  above  sea-level  as  the  Alps,  were  active 
volcanoes ;  and  this  chain  of  volcanoes,  of  which 
Hecla  is  now  the  most  famous  remnant,  extended 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.         29 

across  the  Atlantic  ridge,  all  the  way  from  Wales 
to  Greenland,  which  was  then  covered  with  a 
luxuriant  vegetation  of  oaks  and  chestnuts,  vines 
and  magnolias.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the  Mio- 
cene age  the  general  climate  of  Europe  resembled 
that  of  Algiers  or  Louisiana  at  the  present  day, 
but  at  the  close  of  the  period  it  had  become  some- 
what cooler,  though  still  sub-tropical.  Gigantic 
conifers,  like  the  famous  trees  of  California,  400 
feet  in  height  and  25  or  more  in  thickness,  flour- 
ished all  over  Europe,  from  Italy  to  Norway. 
Along  with  these  there  were  cycads,  fan-palms, 
palmettos,  figs,  laurels  and  myrtles,  poplars, 
oaks,  lindens  and  maples,  acacias  and  elms,  cam- 
phors and  cinnamons  and  sandalwood ;  while  ivies 
and  bignonias  grew  in  great  luxuriance.  Cranes, 
flamingos,  and  pelicans  were  common,  as  also 
geese,  herons,  pheasants,  paroquets,  and  eagles. 
But  the  mammals,  in  this  as  in  the  preceding 
epoch,  present  the  most  instructive  subject  of 
study.  Opossums  were  still  present,  but  had 
vanished  before  the  middle  of  the  period ;  and  a 
few  existing  genera  of  placental  mammals  had 
come  upon  the  scene.  There  were  tapirs  and 
small  rhinoceroses,  as  well  as  squirrels,  moles,  and 
hedgehogs,  and  carnivores  similar  to  the  weasels 
and  civets.  Collateral  ancestors  of  the  deer  and 


80  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

antelope  roamed  about  in  large  herds,  and  by  the 
middle  of  the  period  had  begun  to  acquire  small 
horns  and  antlers.  In  mid-Miocene  times  the  an- 
chitheres  disappeared,  and  were  succeeded  by  the 
hipparion,  much  nearer  in  structure  to  the  horse. 
The  mastodon  came  in  about  the  same  time,  and 
with  him  another  elephant-like  creature,  the  dein- 
otherium,  who  lived  in  the  water  like  a  hippo- 
potamus. Carnivores  of  the  cat  family  reached 
their  highest  point  of  development  as  regards  size 
and  power  in  the  middle  and  upper  Miocene :  the 
machairodus,  or  sabre-toothed  lion,  was  much 
larger  and  more  formidable  than  any  lion  or  tiger 
now  existing.  The  same  period  witnessed  the 
arrival  in  Europe  of  true  apes  and  baboons,  and 
even  of  two  species  of  anthropoid  ape,  allied  to 
the  gibbons,  one  of  which,  the  dryopithecus,  was 
as  large  as  a  man,  and  has  been  regarded  as  in 
some  respects  superior  to  any  modern  anthropoid 
ape. 

Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  —  to  whose  admirable  trea- 
tise on  "  Early  Man  in  Britain  "  this  essay  is  un- 
der great  obligations — argues  forcibly  against  the 
probability  that  man  occupied  Europe  during  any 
part  of  the  Miocene  period.  All  the  species  of 
Miocene  land  mammals,  and  several  of  the  gen- 
era, are  now  extinct;  and  Mr.  Dawkins  urges 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.        31 

that  if  man  existed  at  that  remote  period  it  is 
incredible  that  lie  alone  should  have  subsisted  un- 
changed ainid  the  destruction  or  metamorphosis 
of  all  other  species.  But  it  seems  to  me  that 
Mr.  Dawk  ins  partly  answers  this  argument  him- 
self when  he  observes  that,  "  were  any  man-like 
animal  living  in  the  Miocene  age,  he  might  rea- 
sonably be  expected  to  be  not  man,  but  interme- 
diate between  man  and  something  else,  and  to 
bear  the  same  relation  to  ourselves  as  the  Mio- 
cene apes,  such  as  the  mesopithecus,  bear  to  those 
now  living,  such  as  the  semnopithecus."  Why 
may  not  such  a  semi-human  man  have  existed  in 
the  Miocene  age,  the  race  having  undergone  since 
then  changes  parallel  to  those  which  have  affected 
the  apes,  or  to  those  which  have  affected  generally 
such  Miocene  genera  as  have  survived  down  to 
our  times?  No  remains  of  any  such  creature 
have  been  found,  but  it  is  indisputable  that  arti- 
ficially chipped  flints  and  the  artificially  cut  rib 
of  an  extinct  species  of  manatee  have  been  dis- 
covered in  mid-Miocene  strata  in  France.  Mr. 
Dawkins  is  inclined  to  adopt  M.  Gaudry's  sug- 
gestion that  the  flints  may  have  been  chipped  and 
the  rib  cut  by  the  great  man-like  apev  the  dryopi- 
thecus;  for  although  it  is  not  known  that  any 
existing  apes  are  in  the  habit  of  chipping  flints 


32  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

or  cutting  bones,  yet  it  is  not  impossible  that  the 
dryopithecus  may  have  somewhat  surpassed  the 
present  apes  in  intelligence.  On  the  other  hand, 
M.  de  Mortillet  regards  these  relics  as  conclusive 
proof  of  the  existence  of  man  in  mid-Miocene 
Gaul.  The  question  can  hardly  be  decided  at 
present ;  but  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  Mr. 
Dawkins's  line  of  argument,  which  is  so  conclu- 
sive when  applied  to  the  Eocene  age,  is  equally 
conclusive  when  applied  to  the  Miocene.  At  an 
epoch  when  there  were  no  true  apes  as  yet  to  be 
found,  when  even  the  lemurs  bore  marks  of  kin- 
ship with  the  ancestors  of  ruminants  and  pachy- 
derms, and  when  the  carnivorous  type  was  but 
half  developed,  it  would  clearly  be  idle  to  expect 
to  find  traces  of  man.  But  an  epoch  when  many 
modem  genera  had  come  into  existence  in  all  the 
principal  orders,  and  when  in  particular  there  ex- 
isted an  ape  as  high,  or  higher,  in  organization 
than  the  modern  chimpanzee  or  gorilla,  I  can  see 
no  such  overwhelming  improbability  of  the  exist- 
ence of  man  himself.  No  doubt,  however,  if  the 
remains  of  Miocene  man  are  ever  to  be  found, 
they  will  disclose  a  type  of  humanity  quite  differ- 
ent from,  and  very  likely  much  lower  than,  any 
that  we  now  know.  It  is  not  at  all  improbable 
that  such  remains  will  by  and  by  be  discovered  in 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.         33 

some  part  of  the  earth,  if  not  in  Europe.  By  the 
time  the  strata  of  Africa  have  been  explored  with 
anything  like  the  minuteness  with  which  those 
of  France  and  England  have  been  examined,  we 
shall  be  very  likely  to  meet  with  clear  indications 
t»f  the  former  presence  of  half-human  man,  and  it 
will  not  be  strange  if  such  indications  lead  us  far 
back  into  the  Miocene  epoch. 

In  the  Pliocene  period  the  geographical  struct- 
ure of  Europe  began  to  be  much  more  like  what 
it  is  to-day.  Hitherto,  during  the  greater  part  of 
the  Tertiary  epoch,  large  portions  of  Russia  and 
Siberia  had  been  submerged,  so  that  the  continent 
of  Asia  did  not  extend  nearly  so  far  north  as  at 
present.  A  belt  of  sea  appears  to  have  stretched 
from  the  eastern  Baltic  across  to  the  Persian  Gulf, 
including  the  areas  of  the  Black  and  Caspian  seas ; 
and  another  wide  channel  'seems  to  have  run  west 
of  the  Ural  Mountains,  connecting  the  Caspian 
area  with  the  Arctic  Ocean,  so  that  the  warm  wa- 
ters of  the  Indian  Ocean  found  a  free  passage  to 
the  very  shores  of  Finland  and  Scandinavia.  Ac- 
cording to  Professor  Archibald  Geikie,  these  shal- 
low seas  disappeared  early  in  Pliocene  times,  leav- 
ing the  Aral,  Caspian,  and  Black  seas  in  some- 
thing like  their  present  isolation.  While  eastern 
Europe  thus  began  to  acquire  its  present  contour, 


84  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

equally  remarkable  changes  occurred  at  the  same 
time  in  the  west.  The  Atlantic  ridge  between 
Britain  and  Greenland  was  submerged,  thus  sep- 
arating Europe  from  America,  and  the  connec- 
tions of  Norway  with  Spitzbergen  on  the  one 
hand  and  Scotland  on  the  other  were  also  severed 
by  the  encroachments  of  the  North  Sea.  But  the 
British  Islands  were  still  joined  to  each  other  and 
to  the  Gaulish  mainland ;  the  whole  of  Britain 
jutting  out  from  the  continent  as  a  great  trian- 
gular peninsula,  with  the  Shetlands  in  the  apex. 
The  volcanoes  of  northwest  Britain  gradually  lost 
their  fires  during  the  Pliocene  age.  Icebergs  ap- 
peared in  the  North  Sea,  and  the  general  climate 
of  Europe,  though  still  milder  than  to-day,  waa 
much  colder  than  it  had  been  during  the  Eocene 
and  Miocene  epochs.  The  vegetation  began  to 
lose  its  sub-tropical  aspect.  Bamboos,  evergreen 
oaks,  and  magnolias  still  mingled  with  maples, 
willows,  and  poplars  in  the  latitude  of  Lyons,  but 
the  cinnamon-trees  and  palms  became  restricted 
to  Italy.  Among  mammalia,  the  first  species  that 
has  continued  to  live  down  to  the  present  time, 
namely,  the  African  hippopotamus,  appears  in  the 
upper  Pliocene  strata  of  Auvergne.  The  earliest 
true  elephant,  though  of  a  species  now  extinct,  ap~ 
poara  at  about  the  same  time ;  and  contemporary 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.       35 

with  him  were  two  species  of  mastodon,  of  enor- 
mous size,  a  rhinoceros,  a  tapir,  two  or  more 
bears,  the  giant  sabre-toothed  lion,  an  ancestor  of 
the  panthers  and  lynxes,  and  two  kinds  of  hyaena. 
There  were  many  species  of  deer,  with  antlers, 
but  for  the  most  part  unlike  modern  deer.  The 
ox  appears  first  in  the  upper  Pliocene,  but  with- 
out horns.  There  were  also  wolves,  and  swine, 
and  two  kinds  of  ape.  The  hipparion  still  lived, 
but  was  becoming  scarce,  and  along  with  him 
existed  a  horse,  less  specialized  in  teeth  and  feet 
than  the  modern  horse. 

Now  from  the  fact  that  of  these  Pliocene  mam- 
mals every  one  has  long  since  become  extinct  ex- 
cept the  hippopotamus,  Mr.  Dawkins  again  pro- 
ceeds to  argue  that  it  is  not  likely  that  man 
inhabited  Europe  at  that  period.  The  alleged 
instances,  three  in  number,  of  the  recurrence  of 
human  remains  in  Pliocene  strata  of  France  and 
Italy  he  pronounces  unsatisfactory ;  and  he  does 
not  even  mention  the  brilliant  investigations  of 
the  Geological  Survey  of  Portugal,  which  have 
brought  to  light  flint  implements  of  undoubted 
human  workmanship,  in  great  abundance  in  the 
Pliocene  strata  of  that  country,  buried  under  1,200 
I'eet  of  superincumbent  rock.  These  discoveries, 
set  forth  by  M.  Ribeiro  in  1871,  are  cited  by 


86  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Professor  Whitney  as  furnishing  conclusive  evi- 
dence of  the  presence  of  man  in  Portugal  during 
the  Pliocene  period.  In  his  admirable  memoir  on 
"  The  Auriferous  Gravels  of  the  Sierra  Nevada," 
Professor  Whitney  has  collected  a  great  amount 
of  evidence  which  seems  to  prove  that  man  ex- 
isted in  California  at  an  equally  remote  date. 
Now  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  human  race 
must  have  been  in  existence  for  a  very  long  time 
before  it  could  have  become  so  widely  dispersed 
over  the  earth  as  to  occupy  countries  so  distant 
from  each  other  as  California  and  Portugal.  For 
the  first  appearance  of  man  on  the  earth  we  must, 
therefore,  go  far  back  in  the  Pliocene  period  at 
any  rate;  and  if  we  are  to  find  traces  of  the 
"  missing  link,"  or  primordial  stock  of  primates 
from  which  man  has  been  derived,  we  must  un- 
doubtedly look  for  it  in  the  Miocene. 

Of  the  three  stages  of  the  Tertiary  period  here 
passed  in  review,  we  have  seen  that  the  Eocene 
was  characterized  by  the  entire  absence  of  genera 
and  species  of  mammals  identical  with  those  now 
living  ;  in  the  Miocene  there  were  genera,  but  no 
upecies,  identical  with  those  now  living ;  in  the 
Pliocene  there  was  at  least  one  species  in  Europe 
that  has  survived  to  the  present  day.  When  we 
come  to  the  Pleistocene  age,  we  find  a  majority  of 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.        37 

the  species  identical  with  such  as  still  exist.  But 
in  regard  to  this  Pleistocene  fauna  there  are 
some  curious  circumstances,  which  show  that  the 
climate  of  Europe  had  begun  to  be  subject  to 
vicissitudes  such  as  it  had  not  known  in  the  earlier 
Tertiary  epochs.  Among  the  Pleistocene  mam- 
mals of  Europe  we  find  such  as  are  characteristic 
of  warm  climates,  —  as  the  lion,  leopard,  hyaena, 
elephant,  rhinoceros,  and  hippopotamus  ;  and  along 
with  these  we  find  such  as  characterize  sub-arctic 
climates,  —  as  the  musk-sheep,  reindeer,  glutton, 
arctic  fox,  ibex,  and  chamois;  and  yet  again  we 
find  such  denizens  of  the  temperate  zone  as  the 
bison,  horse,  deer,  wild  boar,  brown  and  grizzly 
bears,  wolf,  and  rabbit,  to  which  may  be  added 
the  mammoth  and  woolly  rhinoceros.  Now,  as 
Mr.  James  Geikie  has  ably  shown,  this  singular 
juxtaposition  of  northern,  southern,  and  temper- 
ate forms  points  directly  to  great  vicissitudes  of 
climate.  It  Is  quite  clear  that  when  the  reindeer 
came  down  as  far  as  southern  France,  the  climate 
must  have  been  very  different  from  what  it  was 
when  the  hippopotamus  bathed  in  the  Thames. 
We  know  otherwise,  from  purely  geologic  evi- 
dence, that  the  Pleistocene  climate  was  very  ex- 
traordinary. Hitherto,  during  the  Tertiary  period, 
the  temperature  of  Europe  seems  to  have  been 


88  Excursion*  of  an  Evolutionist. 

steadily  but  slowly  decreasing,  from  the  Eocene 
epoch,  when  it  was  sub-tropical,  to  the  end  of  the 
Pliocene,  when  it  was  temperate,  though  warmer 
than  at  present.  But  in  the  Pleistocene  epoch 
there  were  at  least  four  or  five,  and  probably 
several  more,  extreme  changes  from  a  warm  to  a 
cold  climate,  and  back  again.  This  period,  or  the 
greater  part  of  it,  has  been  known  as  the  "  Glacial 
Epoch  "  or  the  "  Great  Ice  Age  ;  "  but  recent  re- 
searches have  shown  that  over  Britain  and  cen- 
tral Europe  there  were  several  glacial  epochs,  al- 
ternating with  warm  inter-glacial  periods  of  long 
duration.  When  the  cold  was  at  its  maximum, 
the  whole  area  of  Finland,  Scandinavia,  and  Scot- 
land, with  the  North  and  Baltic  seas,  was  buried 
under  a  stupendous  sheet  of  ice,  varying  from 
1,000  to  2,000  feet  in  thickness  ;  and  this  ice-sheet 
sent  off  glaciers  as  far  east  as  Moscow,  and  as  far 
south  as  Dresden,  while  the  Alps,  the  Pyrenees, 
and  the  mountains  of  Auvergne  became  centres 
of  glaciation,  inferior,  indeed,  to  the  great  north- 
ern ice-sheet,  but  still  immense  in  extent.  While 
the  climate  of  Pleistocene  Europe  thus  came  to 
be  similar  to  that  of  modern  Greenland,  parallel 
phenomena  were  occurring  all  over  the  northern 
hemisphere.  The  continent  of  North  America 
was  deeply  swathed  in  ice  as  fat  south  as  the 


Europe  before  the  Arrival  of  Man.        89 

latitude  of  Philadelphia,  while  glaciers  descended 
into  North  Carolina.  The  valleys  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  supported  enormous  glaciers,  and  the 
same  was  the  case  in  Asia  with  the  Himalayas. 
It  was  during  these  recurrent  periods  of  arctic 
cold  that  the  reindeer  and  musk-sheep  found  their 
way  to  the  south  of  France,  while  over  land- 
bridges  at  Gibraltar  and  Malta  the  leopard  and 
elephant  retreated  to  Africa.  In  the  intervals 
between  these  glacial  periods,  when  the  climate 
became  milder  than  it  is  at  the  present  day,  the 
arctic  mammals  traveled  northward  again,  while 
the  lion  returned  to  chase  the  bison  and  elk  in  the 
forests  of  Yorkshire. 

As  the  result  of  these  prolonged  and  repeated 
climatic  vicissitudes,  and  of  the  complicated  mi- 
grations entailed  by  them,  many  of  the  Pliocene 
mammals  still  living  in  Europe  at  that  time  have 
become  extinct,  —  such  as  the  gigantic  beaver,  the 
cave-bear,  the  sabre-toothed  lion,  five  species  of 
deer,  three  species  of  elephant,  and  two  of 
rhinoceros.  One  race  of  men  —  known  as  the 
"  men  of  the  river  drift "  —  had  taken  up  their 
abode  in  Europe  when  these  great  changes  were 
beginning,  and  struggled  with  the  extremes  of 
climate  like  their  enemies,  the  bears  and  hysenas. 
The  discovery  of  flint  knives  has  abundantly 


40  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

proved  that  man  was  living  near  the  site  of  Lon- 
don before  the  big-nosed  rhinoceros  had  become 
extinct,  and  before  the  arrival  of  the  musk-sheep 
and  the  marmot  in  the  valley  of  the  Thames 
heralded  the  slow  approach  of  the  northern  ice- 
sheet.  But  the  fact  that  human  remains  of  a  date 
even  more  remote  than  this  have  also  been  found 
in  Portugal  and  California  shows,  as  I  have  said 
already,  that  man  was  then  no  new-comer  upon 
the  face  of  the  earth,  but  must  certainly  have 
been  in  existence  for  many  thousands  of  years, 
though  as  yet  we  are  unable  to  assign  either  his 
primeval  habitat  or  the  precise  epoch  of  his  first 
appearance. 
January,  1882. 


n. 

THE  ARRIVAL  OF  MAN  IN  EUROPE. 

TOWARD  the  close  of  the  Pleistocene  age  the 
general  outlines  of  the  European  continent  had 
assumed  very  much  their  present  appearance 
everywhere  except  in  the  northwest.  The  British 
Islands  still  remained  joined  to  one  another  and 
to  the  Gaulish  mainland,  and  occupied  the  gi-eater 
part  of  the  area  of  the  German  Ocean.  Accord- 
ing to  Mr.  James  Geikie,  the  connection  with 
Norway  again  became  complete,  and  the  Atlantic 
ridge  was  again  so  far  elevated  as  to  bring  Scot- 
land into  connection  with  Greenland  through 
the  Faroe  Islands  and  Iceland.  The  whole  of 
Britain  stood  at  an  average  elevation  of  from 
600  to  1,000  feet  above  its  present  level.  The 
Thames,  Humber,  Tyne,  and  Forth  must  all  have 
flowed  into  the  Rhine,  which  emptied  itself  into 
the  North  Sea  beyond  the  latitude  of  the  Shet- 
lancls.  The  glaciers  of  Europe  had  retreated 
within  the  Arctic  Circle,  or  up  to  the  higher  val- 
leys of  the  great  mountain  ranges ;  and  the  cli- 


42  Excursion*  of  an  Evolutionist. 

mate  was  beginning  to  assume  its  present  temper- 
ate and  equable  diameter. 

At  this  remote  epoch  Europe  had  already  been 
inhabited  by  human  beings  during  several  thou- 
sand years.  How  long  before  the  beginning  of 
the  Pleistocene  period  man  had  arrived  in  Europe 
is  still  open  to  question ;  but  there  is  no  doubt 
whatever  that  he  lived  in  Gaul  and  Britain  as  a 
contemporary  of  the  big-nosed  rhinoceros,  and  be- 
fore the  arrival  of  the  arctic  mammalia  -which 
were  driven  from  the  north  as  the  glacial  cold  set 
in.  This  race  of  man  —  described  by  Mr.  Boyd 
Dawkins  as  the  "River-drift  Man  " — is  probably 
now  as  extinct  as  the  cave-bear  or  the  mammoth. 
Late  in  the  Pleistocene  period  it  disappeared 
from  Europe,  and  was  replaced  by  a  new  race, 
coming  from  the  northeast,  along  with  the  musk- 
sheep  and  reindeer,  and  called  by  the  same  emi- 
nent writer  the  "Cave-Man."  Both  the  Cave- 
men and  River-drift  men  were  in  the  stage  of 
culture  known  as  the  Palaeolithic,  or  Old  Stone 
Age ;  that  is,  they  used  only  stone  implements, 
and  these  implements  were  never  polished  or 
ground  to  a  fine  edge,  but  were  only  roughly 
chipped  into  shape,  and  were  very  rude  and  irreg- 
ular in  contour.  The  Palaeolithic  Age,  referring 
as  the  phrase  does  to  a  stage  of  culture,  and  not 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.          43 

to  any  chronological  period,  is  something  which 
has  come  and  gone  at  very  different  dates  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  world.  It  may  be  convenient 
to  remember  that  in  northwestern  Europe  it 
seems  to  have  very  nearly  coincided  with  the 
Pleistocene  period,  provided  we  also  bear  in  mind 
that  the  coincidence  is  purely  fortuitous*  The 
implements  of  the  River-drift  men,  found  in 
Pleistocene  river-beds,  are  very  rude,  and  imply  a 
social  condition  at  least  as  low  as  that  of  the  Aus- 
tralian savages  of  the  present  day.  "  They  con- 
sist," says  Mr.  Dawkins,  "  of  the  flake ;  the 
chopper  or  pebble  roughly  chipped  to  an  edge  on 
one  side ;  the  hdehe  or  oval-pointed  implement, 
intended  for  use  without  a  handle  ;  an  oval  or 
rounded  form  with  a  cutting  edge  all  round,  which 
may  have  been  used  in  a  handle ;  a  scraper  for 
preparing  skins  ;  and  pointed  flints  used  for  bor- 
ing." Man  did  not  then  seek  for  the  materials 
out  of  which  to  make  these  weapons  or  tools,  but 
"merely  fashioned  the  stones  which  happened  to 
be  within  his  reach  —  flint,  quartzite,  or  chert  — 
in  the  shallows  of  the  rivers,  as  they  were  wanted, 
throwing  them  away  after  they  had  been  used." 
No  pottery  of  any  sort  has  been  found  in  associa- 
tion with  these  implements,  nor  were  there  at  that 
period  any  domesticated  animals.  The  River- 


44  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

drift  men  were  evidently  no  tillers  of  the  ground, 
neither  were  they  herdsmen  or  shepherds ;  but 
they  gained  a  precarious  subsistence  by  hunting 
the  great  elk  and  other  deer,  and  contended  with 
packs  of  hyaenas  for  the  caves  which  might  serve 
for  a  shelter  against  the  storm.  As  to  what  may 
have  been  the  social  organization  of  these  pri- 
meval savages,  nothing  whatever  is  known.  They 
were  a  wide-spread  race.  Their  implements  have 
been  found,  in  more  or  less  abundance,  in  Britain, 
Germany,  France,  Spain,  Italy,  Greece,  northern 
Africa,  Palestine,  and  Hindustan.  Their  bones 
have  been  found  in  the  valleys  of  the  Rhine,  the 
Seine,  the  Somme,  and  the  Vezere,  in  sufficient 
numbers  to  show  that  they  were  a  dolicocephalic 
or  long-headed  race,  with  prominent  jaws,  but 
no  complete  skeleton  has  as  yet  been  discovered. 

These  River -drift  men,  as  already  observed, 
belonged  to  the  southern  fauna  which  inhabited 
Europe  before  the  approach  of  the  glacial  cold. 
As  the  climate  of  Europe  became  arctic  and  tem- 
perate by  turns,  the  River-drift  men  appear  to 
have  by  turns  retreated  southward  to  Italy  and 
Africa,  and  advanced  northward  into  Britain, 
along  with  the  leopards,  hyaenas,  and  elephants, 
with  which  they  were  contemporary.  But  after 
several  such  migrations  they  returned  no  more, 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.           45 

but  instead  of  them  wo  find  plentiful  traces  of  the 
Cave-men,  —  a  race  apparently  more  limited  in 
its  range,  and  clearly  belonging  to  a  sub-arctic 
fauna.  The  bones  and  implements  of  the  Cave- 
men are  found  in  association  with  remains  of  the 
reindeer  and  bison,  the  arctic  fox,  the  mammoth, 
and  the  woolly  rhinoceros.  They  are  found  in 
great  abundance  in  southern  and  central  England, 
in  Belgium,  Germany,  and  Switzerland,  and  in 
every  part  of  France  ;  but  nowhere  as  yet  have 
their  remains  been  discovered  south  of  the  Alps 
and  Pyrenees.  A  diligent  exploration  of  the 
Pleistocene  caves  of  England  and  France,  during 
the  past  twenty  years,  has  thrown  some  light 
upon  their  mode  of  life.  Not  a  trace  of  pottery 
has  been  found  anywhere  associated  with  their 
remains,  so  that  it  is  quite  clear  that  the  Cave- 
men did  not  make  earthenware  vessels.  Burnt 
clay  is  a  peculiarly  indestructible  material,  and 
where  it  has  once  been  in  existence  it  is  sure  to 
leave  plentiful  traces  of  itself.  Meat  was  baked 
in  the  caves  by  contact  with  hot  stones,  or 
roasted  before  the  blazing  fire.  Fire  may  have 
been  obtained  by  friction  between  two  pieces  of 
wood,  or  between  bits  of  flint  and  iron  pyrites. 
Clothes  were  made  of  the  furs  of  bisons,  reindeer, 
bears,  and  other  animals,  rudely  sewn  together 


46  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

with  threads  of  reindeer  sinew.  Even  long  fur 
gloves  were  used,  and  necklaces  of  shells  and  of 
bear's  and  lion's  teeth.  The  stone  tools  and 
weapons  were  far  finer  in  appearance  than  those 
of  the  River-drift  men,  though  they  were  still 
chipped,  and  not  ground.  They  made  borers  and 
saws  as  well  as  spears  and  arrowheads ;  and  be- 
sides these  stone  implements  they  used  spears  and 
arrows  headed  with  bone,  and  daggers  of  reindeer 
antler.  The  reindeer,  which  thus  supplied  them 
with  clothes  and  weapons,  was  also  slain  for  food ; 
and,  besides,  they  slew  whales  and  seals  on  the 
coast  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  and  in  the  rivers  they 
speared  salmon,  trout,  and  pike.  They  also  ap- 
pear to  have  eaten,  as  well  as  to  have  been  eaten 
by,  the  cave-lion  and  cave-bear.  Many  details  of 
their  life  are  preserved  to  us  through  their  ex- 
traordinary taste  for  engraving  and  carving. 
Sketches  of  reindeer,  mammoths,  horses,  cave- 
be&rs,  pike,  and  seals,  and  hunting  scenes  have 
been  found  by  the  hundred,  incised  upon  antlers 
or  bones,  or  sometimes  upon  stone ;  and  the  ar- 
tistic skill  which  they  show  is  really  astonishing. 
Most  savages  can  make  rude  drawings  of  objects 
in  which  they  feel  a  familiar  interest,  but  such 
drawings  are  usually  excessively  grotesque,  like  a 
child's  attempt  to  depict  a  man  as  a  sort  of  figure 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.           47 

eight,  with  four  straight  lines  standing  forth  from 
the  lower  half  to  represent  the  arms  and  legs. 
But  the  Cave-men,  with  a  piece  of  sharp-pointed 
flint,  would  engrave,  on  a  reindeer  antler,  an  out- 
line of  a  urus  so  accurately  that  it  can  be  clearly 
distinguished  from  an  ox  or  a  bison.  And  their 
drawings  are  remarkable  not  only  for  their  ac- 
curacy, but  often  equally  so  for  the  taste  and 
vigour  with  which  the  subject  is  treated. 

Among  uncivilized  races  of  men  now  living, 
there  are  none  which  possess  this  remarkable  ar- 
tistic talent  save  the  Eskimos ;  and  in  this  respect 
there  is  complete  similarity  between  the  Eskimos 
and  the  Cave-men.  But  this  is  by  no  means  the 
only  point  of  agreement  between  the  Eskimos 
and  the  Cave-men.  Between  the  sets  of  tools 
and  weapons  used  by  the  one  and  by  the  other 
the  agreement  is  also  complete.  The  stone  spears 
and  arrow-heads,  the  sewing-needles  and  skin- 
scrapers,  used  by  the  Eskimos  are  exactly  like 
the  similar  implements  found  in  the  Pleistocene 
caves  of  France  and  England.  The  necklaces  and 
amulets  of  cut  teeth  and  the  daggers  made  from 
antler,  show  an  equally  close  correspondence.  The 
resemblances  are  not  merely  general,  but  extend 
so  far  into  details  that  if  modern  Eskimo  remains 
were  to  be  put  into  European  caves  they  would 


48  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

be  indistinguishable  in  appearance  from  the  re- 
mains of  the  Cave-men  which  are  now  found 
there.  Now,  when  these  facts  are  taken  in  con- 
nection with  the  facts  that  the  Cave-men  were  an 
arctic  race,  and  especially  that  the  musk-sheep, 
which  accompanied  the  advance  of  the  Cave-men 
into  Europe,  is  now  found  only  in  the  country  of 
the  Eskimos,  though  its  fossil  remains  are  scat- 
tered in  abundance  all  along  a  line  stretching 
from  the  Pyrenees  through  Germany,  Russia,  and 
Siberia,  —  when  these  facts  are  taken  in  connec- 
tion, the  opinion  of  Mr.  Dawkins,  that  the  Cave- 
men were  actually  identical  with  the  Eskimos, 
seems  highly  plausible.  Nothing  can  be  more 
probable  than  that,  in  early  or  middle  Pleistocene 
times,  the  Eskimos  lived  all  about  the  Arctic  Cir- 
cle, in  Siberia  and  northern  Europe  as  well  as  in 
North  America ;  that  during  the  coldest  portions 
of  the  Glacial  period  they  found  their  way  as  far 
south  as  the  Pyrenees,  along  with  the  rest  of  the 
sub-arctic  mammalian  fauna  to  which  they  be- 
longed ;  and  that,  as  the  climate  grew  warmer 
again,  and  vigorous  enemies  from  the  south  began 
to  press  into  Europe  and  compete  with  them,  they 
gradually  fell  back  to  the  northward,  leaving  be- 
hind them  the  innumerable  relics  of  their  former 
presence,  which  we  find  in  the  late  Pleistocene 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.          49 

caves  of  France  and  England.  The  Eskimos, 
then,  are  probably  the  sole  survivors  of  the  Cave- 
men of  the  Pleistocene  period :  among  the  pres- 
ent people  of  Europe  the  Cave-men  have  left  no 
representatives  whatever. 

With  the  passing  away  of  Pleistocene  times, 
further  considerable  changes  occurred  in  the  geog- 
raphy of  Europe  and  in  its  population.  Early 
in  the  Recent  period  the  British  Islands  had  be- 
come detached  from  each  other  and  from  the  con- 
tinent, and  the  North  Sea  and  the  English  and 
Irish  channels  had  assumed  very  nearly  their 
present  sizes  and  shapes.  The  contour  of  the 
Mediterranean,  also,  had  become  nearly  what  it 
is  now  ;  and  in  general  such  changes  as  have  oc- 
curred in  the  physical  structure  of  Europe  during 
the  Recent  period  have  been  comparatively  slight. 
Of  the  mammalia  living  at  the  beginning  of  this 
period,  only  one  species,  the  Irish  elk,  has  become 
extinct.  The  gigantic  cave-bear,  the  cave-lion, 
the  mammoth,  and  the  woolly  rhinoceros  had  all 
become  extinct  at  the  close  of  the  Pleistocene  pe- 
riod, and  the  elephants  and  hyaenas  had  finally 
retreated  into  Africa.  In  Europe  were  now  to 
be  found  the  brown  and  grizzly  bearC,  the  elk  and 
reindeer,  the  wild  boar,  the  urus  or  wild  ox,  the 
wolf  and  fox,  the  rabbit  and  hare,  and  the  badger; 


60  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

and  along  with  these  there  came  those  harbingers 
of  the  dawn  of  civilization,  —  the  dog  and  horse, 
the  domestic  ox  and  pig,  with  the  sheep  and  goat. 
A  new  race  of  men,  also,  the  tamers  and  owners 
of  these  domestic  animals,  had  appeared  on  the 
scene.  These  new  men  could  build  rude  huts  of 
oak  logs  and  rough  planks,  made  by  splitting  the 
tree-trunks  with  wedges.  Such  work  was  not 
done  with  chipped  flint-flakes.  The  men  of  the 
early  Recent  period  had  the  grindstone,  and  used 
it  to  put  a  fine  edge  on  their  stone  hatchets  and 
adzes  ;  so  that  their  appearance  marks  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  era  in  culture.  The  sharp  and 
accurate  edge  of  the  axe,  unattainable  save  by 
grinding,  is  the  symbol  of  this  new  era,  which  is 
known  to  archaeologists  as  the  Neolithic,  or  New 
Stone  Age.  The  huts  of  the  Neolithic  farmers 
and  shepherds  were  built  in  clusters,  and  de- 
fended by  stockades.  Wheat  and  flax  were  raised, 
and  linen  garments  were  added  to  those  of  fur. 
The  distaff  and  loom,  in  rude  shape,  were  in  use, 
and  grain  was  pounded  in  the  mortar  with  a  pes- 
tle. Rude  earthenware  vessels  were  made,  some- 
times ornamented  with  patterns.  Canoes  were 
also  in  use.  The  dead  were  buried  in  long  bar- 
rows, and  from  the  almost  constant  presence  of 
arrow-heads,  pottery,  or  trinkets  in  these  tombi 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  51 

it  has  been  inferred  that  the  Neolithic  men  had 
some  idea  of  a  future  life,  and  buried  these  ob- 
jects for  the  use  of  the  departed  spirits,  as  is  the 
custom  among  most  savage  races  at  the  present 
time. 

The  celebrated  lake-villages  of  Switzerland  be- 
long to  the  Neolithic  or  early  Recent  period  ;  and 
the  remains  of  their  cattle  and  of  their  cultivated 
seeds  and  fruits  have  thrown  light  upon  the  or% 
igin  of  the  Neolithic  civilization.  It  is  certain 
that  the  domestic  animals  did  not  originate  in 
Europe,  but  were  domesticated  in  central  Asia, 
which  was  the  home  of  their  wild  ancestors ;  and, 
moreover,  they  were  not  introduced  into  Europe 
gradually  and  one  by  one,  but  suddenly  and  en 
masse.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  they  must  have 
been  brought  in  from  Asia  by  the  Neolithic  men  ; 
and  the  same  is  true  of  the  four  kinds  of  wheat, 
two  of  barley,  the  millet,  peas,  poppies,  apples, 
pears,  plums,  and  flax,  which  grew  in  the  gardens 
and  orchards  of  Neolithic  Switzerland. 

This  rudimentary  Neolithic  civilization  was 
spread  all  over  Europe,  with  the  exception  of  the 
northern  parts  of  Russia  and  Scandinavia;  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  lasted  for  a  great 
many  centuries.  It  certainly  lingered  in  Gaul 
and  Britain  long  after  the  valley  of  the  Nile  had 


52  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

become  the  seat  of  a  mighty  empire;  perhaps 
even  after  the  Akkadian  power  had  established 
itself  at  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates,  and  "Ur 
of  the  Chaldees  "  had  become  a  name  famous  in 
the  world.  Still  more,  it  is  clear  that  the  Neo- 
lithic population  has  never  been  swept  out  of 
Europe,  like  the  Cave-men  and  the  River-drift 
men  who  had  preceded  it,  but  has  remained  there, 
in  a  certain  sense,  to  this  day,  and  constitutes  a 
very  important  portion  of  our  own  ancestry. 

So  many  skeletons  have  been  obtained  of  the 
men  and  women  of  the  Neolithic  period  that  we 
can  say,  with  some  confidence,  that  the  whole  of 
Europe  was  inhabited  by  one  homogeneous  popu- 
lation, uniform  in  physical  appearance.  The  stat- 
ure was  small,  averaging  5  feet  4  inches  for  the 
men,  and  4  feet  11  inches  for  the  women  ;  and 
the  figure  was  slight.  The  skulls  were  "  dolico- 
cephalic,"  or  long  and  narrow ;  but  the  jaws  were 
small,  the  eyebrows  and  cheek-bones  were  not 
very  prominent,  the  nose  was  aquiline,  and  the 
general  outline  of  the  face  oval  and  probably 
handsome.  In  all  these  points  the  men  of  the 
Neolithic  age  agree  exactly  with  the  Basks  of 
northern  Spain,  the  remnant  of  a  population 
which  at  the  dawn  of  history  still  maintained  an 
independent  existence  in  many  parts  of  Europe. 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  53 

By  their  conquerors,  the  Kelts,  who  led  the  van 
of  the  great  Aryan  invasion  of  Europe,  these 
small-statured  Basks  were  known  as  "  Iberians  " 
or  "westerners"  (Gael,  iver,  Sanskr.  avara,  "west- 
ern "),  and  "  Iberian  "  is  now  generally  adopted 
as  the  name  of  the  race  which  possessed  the  whole 
of  Europe  in  the  Neolithic  age  and  until  the 
Aryan  invasions,  and  which  still  preserves  its  in- 
tegrity in  the  little  territory  between  the  Pyre- 
nees and  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  The  Iberian  com- 
plexion is  a  dark  olive,  with  black  eyes  and  black 
hair ;  so  that  we  may  figure  to  ourselves  with 
some  completeness  how  the  prehistoric  inhabi- 
tants of  Europe  looked. 

It  is  probable  that  in  Neolithic  times  this  Ibe- 
rian population  was  spread  not  only  all  over  Eu- 
rope, but  also  over  Africa  north  of  the  Desert  of 
Sahara ;  so  that  the  Moorish  and  Berber  peoples 
are  simply  Iberians,  with  more  or  less  infusion  of 
blood  from  the  Arabs,  who  conquered  them  at  the 
end  of  the  seventh  century  after  Christ.  And  it 
is  also  probable  that  the  Silures  of  ancient  Brit- 
ain, the  Ligurians  of  southern  Gaul  and  northern 
Italy,  and  the  rich  and  powerful  Etruskans  all 
belonged  to  the  Iberian  race- 
In  very  recent  times  —  probably  not  more  than 
twenty  centuries  before  Christ  —  Europe  was  in- 


54  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

vaded  by  a  new  race  of  men,  coming  from  central 
Asia.  These  were  the  Aryans,  a  race  tall  and 
massive  in  stature  (the  men  averaging  at  least  5 
feet  8  inches,  and  the  women  5  feet  3  inches), 
with  "  brachycephalic  "  or  round  and  broad  skulls, 
with  powerful  jaws  and  prominent  eyebrows,  with 
faces  rather  square  or  angular  than  oval,  with 
fair,  ruddy  complexions  and  blue  eyes,  and  red 
or  flaxen  hair.  Of  these,  the  earliest  that  came 
may  perhaps  have  been  the  Latin  tribes,  with  the 
Dorians  and  lonians ;  but  the  first  that  made  their 
way  through  western  Europe  to  the  shores  of  the 
Atlantic  were  the  Gael,  or  true  Kelts.  After 
these  came  the  Kymry ;  then  the  Teutons ;  and 
finally  —  in  very  recent  times,  near  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era  —  the  Slavs.  These  Aryan 
invaders  were  further  advanced  in  civilization 
than  the  Iberians,  who  had  so  long  inhabited 
Europe.  They  understood  the  arts  which  the 
latter  understood,  and,  besides  all  this,  they  had 
learned  how  to  work  metals;  and  their  invasion 
of  Europe  marks  the  beginning  of  what  arch£eol- 
ogists  call  the  Bronze  Age,  when  tools  and  weap- 
ons were  no  longer  made  of  polished  stones,  but 
were  wrought  from  an  alloy  of  copper  and  tin. 
The  great  blonde  Aryans  everywhere  overcame 
the  small  brunette  Iberians,  but,  instead  of  one 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  55 

race  exterminating  or  expelling  the  other,  the 
two  races  everywhere  became  commingled  in 
various  proportions.  In  Greece,  southern  Italy, 
Spain,  and  southern  France,  where  the  Iberians 
were  most  numerous  as  compared  with  the  Aryan 
invaders,  the  people  are  still  mainly  small  in  stat- 
ure and  dark  in  complexion.  In  Russia  and  Scan- 
dinavia, where  there  were  very  few  Iberians,  the 
people  show  the  purity  of  their  Aryan  descent  in 
their  fair  complexion  and  large  stature.  While  in 
northern  Italy  and  northern  France,  in  Germany 
and  the  British  Islands,  the  Iberian  and  Aryan 
statures  and  complexions  are  intermingled  in  end- 
less variety. 

We  have  now  carried  this  brief  account  of  the 
arrival  of  man  in  Europe  as  far  as  is  requisite  for 
our  present  purpose.  Starting  from  ages  of  which 
only  a  palseontological  record  is  preserved,  we 
have  gradually  come  down  to  a  period  almost 
within  the  ken  of  history.  We  have  seen  Europe 
inhabited  in  succession  by  four  distinct  races  of 
men:  first,  the  men  of  the  River-drift,  who  be- 
longed to  a  warm  climate,  and  who  during  the 
Glacial  period  became  extinct,  along  with  many 
of  the  sub-tropical  mammals  with  which  they 
were  contemporary;  secondly,  the  Cave-men,  who 
belonged  to  a  cold  climate,  and  of  whom  the  Es- 


66  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

kimos  are  now  probably  a  surviving  remnant; 
thirdly,  the  swarthy  Iberians  ;  and,  fourthly,  the 
fair-skinned  Aryans,  —  these  two  latest  races  hav- 
ing by  intermarriage  given  rise  to  the  present 
mixed  population  of  Europe. 

Our  next  problem  is  to  see  how  far  it  may  be 
possible  to  introduce  anything  like  chronology 
into  this  series  of  events.  How  long  is  it  since 
the  River-drift  men  inhabited  Europe  ?  Or  when 
did  the  first  Iberians,  with  their  polished  stone 
axes  and  their  herds  of  cattle,  begin  to  build  their 
rude  villages  in  Switzerland  and  Gaul?  To  such 
questions  no  very  positive  answers  can  be  re- 
turned. But  still  we  are  not  left  wholly  in  the 
dark.  A  method  of  inquiry  can  be  pointed  out, 
by  following  which  we  may  at  least  come  to  un- 
derstand the  "orders  of  magnitudes"  in  time 
with  which  we  have  to  deal.  We  can  substitute 
partially  definite  conceptions  for  wholly  vague 
ones.  And  we  can  see  how,  by  following  the 
aame  line  of  inquiry  with  more  ample  data,  it 
may  be  possible  by  and  by  to  introduce  some- 
thing like  chronology  into  the  geologic  history  of 
the  earth's  surface. 

The  so-called  "  Glacial  epoch  "  here  all  at  once 
acquires  a  wonderful  interest  for  us.  We  have 
seen  that  it  is  certain  that  men  inhabited  Britain 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  57 

contemporaneously  with  the  big-nosed  rhinoceros, 
which  became  extinct  about  the  beginning  of  the 
Glacial  period.  How  long  men  lived  upon  the 
earth  before  that  time  we  do  not  know ;  but  it  is 
clearly  established  that  there  were  men  in  Britain 
then.  It  would  accordingly  be  very  interesting  to 
know  when  the  Glacial  period  began  to  come  on 
in  Europe.  But  on  this  point  it  has  already  be- 
come possible  to  form  something  like  a  definite 
opinion. 

To  understand  how  we  can  arrive  at  a  date  for 
the  Glacial  period,  it  is  necessary  first  to  under- 
stand the  cause  of  that  wonderful  change  of 
climate  which  allowed  all  Europe  as  far  south  as 
Dresden,  and  all  America  as  far  south  as  Phila- 
delphia, to  become  swathed  in  an  ice-sheet  like 
that  which  now  covers  Greenland.  The  causes 
of  this  event  were  many  and  complicated,  but  the 
arch-cause  —  the  cause  which  unlocked  all  the 
others  and  set  them  going  —  was  an  astronom- 
ical cause.  It  has  been  proved  by  Mr.  Croll  that 
the  primary  cause  of  the  glaciation  of  the  north- 
ern hemisphere  was  a  change  in  the  shape  of  the 
earth's  orbit,  such  as  had  occurred  before  and  will 
occur  again  ;  and  the  dates  of  these  changes  in  the 
orbit,  whether  past  or  future,  can  be  determined 
by  astronomical  methods  with  great  accuracy. 


58  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

The  reason  why  the  weather  is  warmer  in 
summer  than  in  winter  is  that  in  summer  the  days 
are  longer  than  the  nights,  so  that  the  surface  of 
the  earth  receives  more  heat  in  the  day-time  than 
it  can  lose  by  radiation  during  the  night ;  while  in 
winter  the  case  is  exactly  the  reverse.  Another 
circumstance  tends  to  make  the  earth  warmer  at 
one  time  than  another,  —  namely,  the  fact  that 
the  earth's  orbit  is  not  quite  circular,  but  slightly 
elliptical  or  eccentric,  so  that  at  one  season  of  the 
year  the  earth  is  nearer  to  or  farther  from  the 
sun  than  at  another  season.  At  present  the  north- 
ern hemisphere  is  nearest  the  sun  in  winter  and 
farthest  from  it  in  summer,  but  the  difference  is 
only  about  3,000,000  miles.  It  must  also  be  re- 
membered that  when  the  earth  is  near  perihelion 
it  moves  faster  than  when  it  is  near  aphelion,  so 
that  the  season  when  it  is  nearer  the  sun  is  always 
a  little  shorter  than  the  season  when  it  is  farther 
from  the  sun.  Thus  in  our  northern  hemisphere 
at  present  the  winter  half  of  the  year,  or  the  in- 
terval from  the  autumnal  to  the  vernal  equinox, 
is  nearly  8  days  shorter  than  the  summer  half  of 
the  year.  Thus  the  difference  in  length  between 
our  summer  and  winter  seasons,  and  the  differ- 
ence between  our  distances  from  the  sun  at  the 
two  extremes  of  the  year,  are  not  great  differ- 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  59 

ences,  but  the  advantage,  such  as  it  is,  is  on  the 
side  of  summer. 

But  these  relations  between  the  earth  and  the 
sun  are  perpetually  altering.  First,  owing  to  the 
great  revolution  known  as  the  "precession  of 
the  equinoxes,"  the  earth's  perihelion  10,500  years 
ago  came  in  midsummer  in  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere, and  it  will  come  so  again  10,500  years 
hence.  In  this  state  of  things  the  winter  half  of 
the  year  was  and  will  be  8  days  longer  than  the 
summer  half.  Secondly,  the  shape  of  the  earth's 
orbit  changes  from  time  to  time,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  variously-compounded  attractions 
exerted  upon  it  by  its  companion  planets.  These 
changes  occur  at  irregular  intervals,  but  they 
admit  of  accurate  calculation,  and  have  been 
computed  for  3,000,000  years  in  the  past  and 
1,000,000  years  in  the  future  by  Mr.  Croll,  from 
formulas  furnished  by  Leverrier.  It  has  thus  been 
ascertained  that  at  three  several  times  within  the 
past  3,000,000  years  the  earth's  orbit  has  become 
very  much  elongated,  so  that  the  difference  be- 
tween its  greatest  and  least  distances  from  the 
sun  has  been  between  four  and  five  times  as  great 
as  at  present,  —  that  is,  it  has  been  from  12,000,- 
000  to  14,000,000  miles.  The  first  of  these  pe- 
riods of  high  eccentricity  began  2,650,000  years 


60  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ago  and  lasted  200,000  years ;  the  second  began 
880,000  years  ago,  and  lasted  180,000  years ;  the 
third  began  240,000  years  ago,  and  lasted  160,000 
years.  For  the  last  50,000  years,  the  departure 
of  the  earth's  orbit  from  the  circular  form  has 
been  exceptionally  small. 

Now  let  us  suppose  one  of  these  long  periods  of 
high  eccentricity  to  coincide  with  one  of  the  short 
periods  of  10,500  years,  when  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere has  its  aphelion  in  winter ;  and  this,  of 
course,  has  happened  not  once  only,  but  a  great 
many  times.  Under  such  circumstances,  the 
northern  hemisphere  is  98,000,000  miles  distant 
from  the  sun  at  midwinter  instead  of  91,000,000, 
as  at  present,  and  the  winter  is  26  days  longer 
than  the  summer  instead  of  8  days  shorter,  as  at 
present.  On  the  other  hand,  at  midsummer  the 
sun's  distance  is  only  86,000,000  miles  instead  of 
94,000,000,  as  at  present.  Now  how  must  this 
state  of  things  affect  the  climate  of  the  northern 
hemisphere  ? 

In  the  first  place,  the  diminution  in  the  quantity 
of  heat  received  daily  from  the  sun  in  winter 
would  be  such  as  to  lower  the  average  temperature 
of  the  whole  northern  hemisphere  by  about  35° 
F.,  so  that  for  example  the  average  January 
temperature  of  England,  which  is  now  39°,  would 


The  Arrival  oj~  Man  in  ^Europe.  61 

fall  to  4°.  And,  conversely,  heat  enough  would 
be  received  to  raise  the  mean  summer  temper- 
ature by  about  60°  above  what  it  now  is. 

So  far  very  good,  as  concerns  the  amount  of 
heat  actually  received  from  the  sun.  But  would 
the  summer  temperature  be  raised  like  this  ?  It 
would  not ;  and  this  is  because  our  earth  has  a 
means  of  storing  up  cold,  so  to  speak,  which  gives 
winter  the  advantage  over  summer  in  such  a  con- 
test. With  the  mean  January  temperature  of 
England  at  4°  F.  instead  of  39°,  all  the  moisture 
which  now  falls  as  rain  would  fall  as  snow,  and 
Would  accumulate  on  the  ground.  At  the  coming 
of  summer,  all  the  snow  and  ice  would  have  to  be 
melted,  and  it  takes  a  great  deal  of  heat  to  melt 
snow  and  ice.  As  Mr.  Wallace  graphically  puts 
it,  "  to  melt  a  layer  of  ice  only  one  and  a  half 
inch  thick  would  require  as  much  heat  as  would 
raise  a  stratum  of  air  800  feet  thick  from  the 
freezing-point  to  the  tropical  heat  of  88°  F.  ! " 
Until  the  snow  is  all  melted,  no  amount  of  solar 
heat  can  raise  the  temperature  much  above  the 
freezing-point;  and  this  is  the  reason  why,  in 
regions  where  much  moisture  is  condensed  as 
snow,  as  in  Greenland,  and  at  the  summits  of  the 
Andes,  Alps,  and  Himalayas,  snow  is  perpetual. 
So  that,  in  the  case  we  have  supposed,  the  extra 


62  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

heat  received  from  the  sun  in  the  short  summer 
would  largely  be  exhausted  in  melting,  the  snow, 
an^,  instead  of  raising  the  mean  temperature  60°, 
it  is  doubtful  if  it  would  raise  it  at  all  above  the 
point  which  it  attains  at  the  present  time.  Be- 
sides all  this,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
rapid  melting  of  great  masses  of  snow  produces 
fog,  and  thus  not  only  obscures  the  sun's  heat, 
but  leads  to  further  heavy  condensation  in  the 
shape  of  cold  rains.  Now  bear  in  mind  that  this 
state  of  things  goes  on  for  at  least  half  of  the 
period  of  10,500  years,  when  the  aphelion  of  the 
northern  hemisphere  occurs  between  September 
and  March,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  how  the  snow 
and  ice  must  so  far  gain  the  upper  hand  that  the 
intense  summer  heat  cannot  produce  any  consid- 
erable impression  on  them,  but  the  region  of 
"  eternal  snow,"  no  longer  confined  to  the  tops  of 
lofty  mountains,  descends  to  the  sea-level  through- 
out a  large  part  of  the  northern  hemisphere. 
Thus  we  get  far  toward  an  explanation  of  the 
causes  of  the  Glacial  epoch.  But  still  other 
causes  have  conspired  with  those  here  pointed  out 
to  enhance  the  general  effect. 

While  the  northern  hemisphere  was  situated 
as  just  described,  the  state  of  things  in  the  south- 
ern  hemisphere  must  have  been  entirely  different. 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.           63 

There  the  perihelion  occurring  in  winter  and  the 
aphelion  in  summer,  with  the  same  high  eccen- 
tricity, the  summer  would  be  26  days  longer  than 
the  winter,  and  the  climatic  result  would  be  per- 
petual spring.  And  this  would  affect  the  flow  of 
ocean-currents  in  such  a  way  as  to  deprive  the 
northern  hemisphere  of  its  only  possible  chance  of 
escaping  the  glaciation  we  have  just  depicted.  Let 
us  notice  this  point  carefully,  for  it  is  one  of  great 
importance. 

We  have  supposed  the  lowering  of  the  average 
winter  temperature  of  England,  for  example,  due 
to  the  great  aphelion  distance  of  the  sun,  to  be 
35°  F.  There  is  one  way  in  which  this  effect 
might  be  partially  modified,  and  that  is  by  the 
equalizing  influence  of  the  Gulf  Stream.  But  in 
the  case  we  have  supposed,  this  influence  would 
almost  certainly  be  cut  off.  The  direction  of  the 
main  ocean-currents  is  determined  by  the  trade- 
winds,  and  the  trade-winds  are  caused  by  the  dif- 
ference of  temperature  between  the  poles  and  the 
equator.  As  the  heated  air  at  the  equator  rises, 
the  cooler  air  from  north  and  south  flows  in  to 
take  its  place,  and  these  atmospheric  currents 
flowing  from  the  north  and  south  poles  toward 
the  equator  are  what  are  called  the  trade-winds. 
The  strength  of  the  trade- winds  depends  entire1  y 


64  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

upon  the  difference  in  temperature  between  the 
equator  and  the  pole  ;  the  greater  the  difference, 
the  stronger  the  wind.  Now,  at  the  present  time, 
the  south  pole  is  much  colder  than  the  north  pole, 
and  the  southern  trades  are  consequently  much 
stronger  than  the  northern,  so  that  the  neutral 

O 

zone  in  which  they  meet  lies  some  five  degrees 
north  of  the  equator.  The  trade-winds,  pushing 
stupendous  masses  of  surface  ocean-water,  produce 
the  main  ocean-currents  ;  and  accordingly  these 
currents  now  tend  chiefly  from  south  to  north,  so 
that  most  of  the  heated  water  of  the  central  At- 
lantic, both  north  and  south  of  the  equator,  gets 
carried  into  the  northern  temperate  zone.  In  this 
way  the  Gulf  Stream,  coming  northward  up  the 
west  coast  of  Africa,  sweeps  across  the  Atlantic 
to  the  easternmost  point  of  Brazil,  where  part  of 
it  gets  deflected  southward  toward  the  Antarctic 
Ocean,  but  most  of  it  flows  northwesterly  into  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  whence  it  is  deflected  northeast- 
erly toward  the  European  coast,  giving  to  Eng- 
land its  climate  of  perpetual  spring  in  the  latitude 
of  Labrador,  and  tempering  the  cold  of  the  North 
Sea  even  beyond  the  Arctic  Circle.  According 
to  Mr.  Croll,  the  quantity  of  extra  heat  which 
the  northern  hemisphere  receives  from  this  source, 
over  and  above  that  which  it  would  get  simply 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  65 

from  direct  solar  radiation,  amounts  to  fully  one 
fourth  of  the  latter  quantity.  But  when  the 
aphelion  of  the  northern  hemisphere  occurred  in 
midwinter,  along  with  a  very  high  eccentricity, 
all  this  must  have  been  changed.  The  tendency 
of  these  circumstances,  as  we  have  seen,  was  to 
make  the  northern  hemisphere  very  cold,  while 
producing  a  perpetual  spring  in  the  southern 
hemisphere.  Now,  when  once  the  north  pole 
had  become  colder  than  the  south  pole,  the  north- 
ern trades  would  begin  to  blow  with  greater  force 
than  the  southern,  until  after  a  while  the  neutral 
line  between  the  two  would  be  shifted  south  of 
the  equator,  and,  instead  of  the  warm  waters  of 
the  southern  tropical  ocean  being  carried  into  the 
northern  seas,  the  case  would  be  just  the  reverse. 
The  great  ocean-currents,  instead  of  all  tending 
northward,  as  they  do  to-day,  would  all  tend 
southward.  A  very  little  deflection  of  this  sort 
would,  at  the  easternmost  point  of  Brazil,  turn 
the  whole  of  the  Gulf  Stream  southward  down 
the  coast  of  South  America,  and  prevent  any  part 
of  it  from  flowing  up  into  the  North  Atlantic, 
and  in  this  way  the  progressing  refrigeration  of 
Europe  and  North  America  would  be  most  pow- 
erfully enhanced. 

Thus,  when  the  eccentricity  of  the  earth's  orbit 


06  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

was  three  or  four  times  as  great  as  at  present,  and 
during  the  period  when  aphelion  in  the  northern 
hemisphere  occurred  in  the  winter  season  between 
September  and  March,  the  tendency  must  h;we 
been  toward  perpetual  snow  and  ice  over  a  large 
part  of  the  northern  hemisphere,  and  toward 
perpetual  spring  throughout  the  southern  hemi- 
sphere. But  when  winter  aphelion  occurred  in 
the  southern  hemisphere,  then  everything  -was  re- 
versed ;  then  the  tendency  south  of  the  equator 
was  toward  glaciation,  and  north  of  the  equator 
it  was  toward  perpetual  spring.  In  Europe  you 
would  have,  for  10,500  years,  a  period  during 
which  the  climate  would  gradually  become  more 
and  more  arctic  for  5,250  years,  thenceforward 
gradually  becoming  less  severe  ;  and  upon  this 
would  ensue  another  period  of  10,500  years,  dur- 
ing which  the  climate  would  grow  more  and  more 
equable  for  5,250  years,  thenceforward  gradually 
increasing  again  the  differences  between  summer 
and  winter  ;  and  in  a  period  of  160,000  years  such 
21,000-year  cycles  would  naturally  occur  nearly 
eight  times.  So  that,  upon  a  geological  survey  of 
what  is  called  the  Glacial  epoch,  we  might  expect 
to  find  an  alternation  of  severe  and  mild  climates 
in  Europe, — an  alternation  of  epochs  in  which 
Britain  was  inhabited  by  the  hippopotamus  with 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.           67 

epochs  in  which  the  reindeer  roamed  to  the  south 
of  France.  And  this  is,  in  fact,  what  we  do  find. 
It  is  not  long  since  the  Glacial  period  in  Europe 
was  supposed  to  have  been  one  long  monotonous 
period  of  extreme  cold ;  but  now  the  foremost 
geologists  —  such  as  Mr.  James  Geikie,  who  has 
more  than  any  one  else  illustrated  this  subject  — 
have  discovered  at  least  four  or  five  alternations 
of  warm  and  cold  periods  in  Europe  during  the 
Glacial  epoch ;  and  with  further  and  more  mi- 
nute research  we  may  expect  the  agreement  be- 
tween observation  and  deduction  to  become  still 
more  convincing. 

Enough  has  now  been  said  to  give  the  reader 
some  idea  of  the  magnificent  line  of  reasoning  by 
which  Mr.  Croll  has  unfolded  the  causes  of  the 
Glacial  period.  And  it  also  becomes  apparent  at 
once  why  we  must  probably  select  the  latest  pe- 
riod of  high  eccentricity  in  the  earth's  orbit  as 
the  period  for  which  we  have  been  seeking.  For 
that  period  —  which  began  240,000  years  ago,  and 
terminated  80,000  years  ago — presented  such  a 
set  of  astronomical  circumstances  as  must  have 
resulted  in  the  repeated  glaciation  of  the  northern 
hemisphere,  after  the  manner  above  described. 
And  the  antiquity  of  that  period  seems  to  be  suf- 
ficiently great  to  allow  for  the  geological  changes 


68  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist, 

which  have  occurred  since  the  Pleistocene  age. 
If  we  were  to  assign  an  earlier  epoch  of  high  ec- 
centricity for  the  Glacial  period,  it  would  then 
become  necessary  to  show  why,  with  the  present 
relations  of  land  and  sea  on  the  globe,  the  latest 
epoch  of  high  eccentricity  should  not  have  pro- 
duced a  subsequent  glacial  period.  But  the  Gla- 
cial period  which  Agassiz  first  taught  us  to  under- 
stand, and  which  in  recent  years  has  been  made 
the  subject  of  such  minute  study,  is  clearly  the 
latest  glacial  period  that  has  occurred  in  the 
northern  hemisphere  ;  for  it  is  the  one  of  which 
the  traces  are  now  everywhere  around  us  ;  it  is 
the  one  which  has  carved  the  mountains  of  Scot- 
land and  New  England  in  their  present  beautiful 
outlines,  and  covered  their  sides  with  boulders, 
and  filled  the  valleys  with  romantic  tarns  or  mag- 
nificent lakes.  If  we  adopt  Mr.  Croll's  theory  of 
the  causes  of  glaciation,  we  are  clearly  bound  to 
look  to  the  latest  rather  than  to  any  earlier  mani- 
festation of  those  causes,  in  order  to  account  for 
that  glacial  period  the  effects  of  which  are  still 
visible  all  around  us.  Accordingly,  among  the 
foremost  geologists  who  have  adopted  Mr.  Croll's 
conclusions,  there  has  been  a  general  agreement 
that  the  period  of  high  eccentricity  which  began 
240,000  years  ago  and  ended  80,000  years  ago 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  69 

must  have  been  coincident  with  the  great  period 
of  glaciation  which  occurred  during  the  Pleisto- 
cene age  in  Europe  and  America. 

The  most  serious  objection  that  has  been  urged 
against  Mr.  Croll's  theory  is  that  it  seems  to  re- 
quire us  to  suppose  that  there  have  been  recurrent 
glacial  epochs,  at  irregular  intervals,  during  the 
whole  past  duration  of  the  earth's  history.  And 
in  particular  it  would  seem  to  be  implied  that 
there  must  have  been  a  great  glacial  period  from 
880,000  to  700,000  years  ago,  and  another  one 
from  2,650,000  to  2,450,000  years  ago,  both  of 
these  dates  being  long  subsequent  to  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Tertiary  period.  Mr.  Croll  has  sought 
to  meet  these  objections  by  showing  that  such 
must  really  have  been  the  case.  He  alleges  evi- 
dence of  glaciation  in  every  one  of  the  geological 
periods  back  to  the  Cambrian,  with  the  single 
exception  of  the  Triassic.  And  he  argues,  in 
particular,  that  the  epoch  of  high  eccentricity 
which  began  880,000  years  ago  corresponded  with 
a  glacial  epoch  in  the  Miocene  period,  and  that  in 
like  manner  the  date  of  2,650,000  years  ago  wit- 
nessed the  beginning  of  a  great  glacial  epoch  in 
the  Eocene  period.  But  these  conclusions  are 
not  generally  adopted  by  geologists.  There  are 
some  evidences  of  local  glaciation  in  the  Miocene 


70  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,. 

period  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Alps,  which 
were  probably  higher  then  than  they  are  at  pres- 
ent, but  the  weight  of  evidence  is  entirely  in  fa- 
vour of  the  conclusion  that  the  general  climate  of 
Europe  throughout  the  Eocene  and  Miocene  pe- 
riods was  much  warmer  than  it  has  been  at  any 
later  date.  From  the  Eocene  period  down  to  the 
Pleistocene,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  there 
was  a  slow  but  steady  lowering  of  the  mean  tem- 
perature of  Europe,  until  in  the  latter  period  there 
occurred  that  comparatively  rapid  refrigeration 
which  brought  about  a  glacial  epoch.  In  earlier 
than  Tertiary  times,  on  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Croll 
seems  to  have  been  more  successful.  There  are 
distinct  and  numerous  evidences  of  extensive  gla- 
ciation  in  Europe  during  the  remote  Permian 
period  ;  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  similar  phe^ 
nomena  may  have  taken  place  in  Silurian  times. 
On  the  whole,  however,  it  does  not  seem  likely 
that  there  have  been  many  periods  of  extreme  gla- 
ciation,  like  that  which  we  suppose  to  have  ended 
about  80,000  years  ago  ;  and  it  is  quite  unlikely 
that  there  has  been  any  other  such  period  since 
the  beginning  of  Tertiary  times.  How,  then,  shall 
we  explain  the  occurrence  of  two  periods  of  high 
eccentricity,  one  lasting  200,000  and  the  other 
180,000  years,  without  an  accompanying  glacia- 
tion  of  the  northern  hemisphere  ? 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  Tl 

This  difficulty  has  been  sometimes  cited  as  fatal 
to  Mr.  Croll's  theory;  but  when  we  fully  consider 
all  the  conditions  of  the  case,  we  shall  see  that  it 
is  not  so.  For  we  must  remember  that  it  is  not 
simply  the  cold,  but  it  is  the  snow  of  the  glacial 
winter,  that  chills  the  summers  and  renders  pos- 
sible the  accumulation  of  ice.  To  produce  a  gla- 
cial epoch,  according  to  Mr.  Croll's  theory,  it  is 
not  enough  that  the  mean  winter  temperature  of 
the  northern  hemisphere  should  be  lowered  35°  F., 
unless  there  is  enough  condensation  of  moisture 
going  on  to  produce  an  abundant  snowfall.  Under 
such  geographical  conditions  as  exist  to-day,  and 
as  existed  during  the  Pleistocene  period,  there 
would  be  such  a  condensation  and  such  a  snow- 
fall ;  but  in  the  Eocene  and  Miocene  periods  it 
was  probably  otherwise.  The  explanation  is  not 
difficult. 

The  most  efficient  promoters  of  condensation 
are  mountains,  which,  thrusting  their  cold  sum- 
mits high  into  the  air,  precipitate  the  surrounding 
moisture.  It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  mountainous 
districts  are  apt  to  be  rainy,  and  that  very  high 
mountains  are  usually  covered  with  snow  in  mid- 
summer, even  while  oranges  and  palms  are  flour- 
ishing a  few  thousand  feet  below.  It  is  not  quite 
so  familiar  a  fact  that  no  intensity  of  arctic 


72  Excursions  of  an  ^Evolutionist. 

will  suffice  to  prevent  a  warm  or  mild  summer 
unless  there  is  an  extensive  deposit  of  snow  in 
the  winter.  Now,  nowhere  on  the  earth  do  we 
find  any  lowlands  of  great  extent  covered  with 
perpetual  snow.  The  coldest  winters  on  the 
globe  occur  in  eastern  Siberia,  where  the  temper- 
ature often  averages  — 40°  F.  for  several  weeks 
in  succession,  and,  according  to  Professor  Pum- 
pelly,  sometimes  sinks  to  — 120°  F. !  Yet  so  dry 
is  the  atmosphere  that  but  little  snow  falls,  and 
after  this  has  been  melted  in  the  spring  the 
weather  rapidly  grows  warm.  "  At  Yakutsk,  in 
62  degrees  N.  latitude,  the  thermometer  stands 
often  at  77°  in  the  shade,  and  wheat  and  rye  pro- 
duce from  fifteen  to  forty  fold,"  while  the  prairies 
are  covered  with  grass  and  flowers.  As  Mr.  Wal- 
lace observes,  "it  is  only  where  there  are  lofty 
mountains  or  plateaus  —  as  in  Greenland,  Spitz- 
bergen,  and  Grinnell  Land  —  that  glaciers,  accom- 
panied by  perpetual  snow,  coVer  the  country,  and 
descend  in  places  to  the  level  of  the  sea."  The 
coast  of  the  Antarctic  Continent  is  girded  with 
lofty  mountains,  which  effect  such  condensation 
in  the  damp  sea-air  about  them  that  the  continent 
is  buried  under  a  mass  of  ice  more  than  a  mile  in 
thickness.  The  antarctic  islands  South  Georgia 
and  South  Shetland  "  are  very  mountainous,  and 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  73 

send  down  glaciers  into  the  sea ;  and  as  they  are 
exposed  to  moist  sea-air  on  every  side,  the  precipi- 
tation, almost  all  of  which  takes  the  form  of  snow 
even  in  summer,  is  of  course  unusually  large." 

In  order,  therefore,  to  get  a  centre  from  which 
to  start  an  accumulation  of  snow  and  ice  sufficient 
to  bring  on  a  glacial  epoch  in  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere, it  would  seem  absolutely  necessary  that 
there  should  be  a  considerable  amount  of  high 
land  within  the  Arctic  Circle.  But  in  the  Eocene 
and  Miocene  periods  this  condition  does  not  seern 
to  have  been  satisfied.  Throughout  the  greater 
part  of  these  two  periods  the  area  within  the 
Arctic  Circle  was  less  elevated  than  it  has  been 
ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  Pliocene  age. 
Greenland  stood  lower  than  at  present,  and  the 
greater  part  of  Siberia  was  submerged.  More- 
over, as  already  stated  in  the  preceding  paper,  the 
continents  of  Europe  and  Asia  did  not  become 
"  united  into  one  unbroken  mass  "  until  the  Plio- 
cene period.  In  the  earlier  Tertiary  times  the 
warm  waters  of  the  Indian  Ocean  flowed  north- 
westward between  Asia  and  Europe  even  into  the 
Arctic  Ocean,  the  mountains  of  Armenia  and  the 
Caucasus  protruding  as  islands  from  this  vast  sea 
surface.  Again,  Mr.  Wallace  has  pointed  out  a 
number  of  peculiarities  in  the  distribution  of 


74  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

plants  and  animals  in  the  southern  hemisphere 
which  "  render  it  almost  certain  "  that  in  the 
early  Tertiary  times  the  antarctic  land  was  much 
more  extensive  than  at  present.  Now  an  eleva- 
tion in  the  antarctic  region,  increasing  the  deposit 
of  snow  and  ice  about  the  south  pole,  and  thus 
increasing  the  difference  of  temperature  between 
the  south  pole  and  the  equator,  would  be  just 
what  was  needed  to  convert  the  fickle  monsoons 
of  the  Indian  Ocean  into  a  steady  and  powerful 
trade-wind,  that  would  drive  the  warm  water 
northward  through  the  channel  between  Europe 
and  Asia,  even  as  far  as  the  north  pole.  This 
current  from  the  Indian  Ocean  must  have  been 
more  than  equal  to  the  Gulf  Stream  in  heating 
power,  and  its  effect  would  be  to  prevent  any  ac- 
cumulation of  ice  within  the  Arctic  Circle,  and 
to  produce  in  Greenland  such  a  climate  as  it  is 
known  to  have  enjoyed  in  the  Miocene  period, 
when  it  was  covered  with  a  vegetation  as  luxuri- 
ant as  that  of  Virginia  at  the  present  day. 

This  question  is  discussed  at  considerable  length 
and  with  great  ability  by  Mr.  Wallace,  in  his 
treatise  on  "Island  Life."  His  argument  is  in 
some  respects  the  most  valuable  contribution  that 
has  ever  been  made  to  our  understanding  of  past 
climatic  changes.  He  makes  it  perfectly  clear 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  75 

that  while  Mr.  Croll's  astronomical  interpretation 
of  the  Glacial  period  is  perfectly  correct  in  prin- 
ciple, nevertheless  extensive  glaciatiou  cannot 
take  place  unless  the  geographical  conditions  are 
such  as  to  enable  a  great  accumulation  of  ice  to 
begin.  We  are  not,  therefore,  obliged,  on  Mr. 
Croll's  view,  to  suppose  that  every  epoch  of  high 
eccentricity  has  inaugurated  a  glacial  period  ;  and 
we  see,  in  particular,  why  such  a  result  was  not 
likely  to  follow  2,650,000  years  ago  or  800,000 
years  ago,  supposing  the  latter  date  to  have  oc- 
curred before  the  beginning  of  the  Pliocene  age ; 
and  thus  the  only  serious  objection  to  Mr.  Croll's 
theory  is  effectually  disposed  of. 

We  have  every  reason  to  believe,  then,  that 
the  great  Glacial  period  of  the  Pleistocene  age 
began  240,000  years  ago,  and  came  to  an  end 
80,000  years  ago.  But  at  the  beginning  of  this 
period  men  were  living  in  the  valley  of  the 
Thames  ;  at  the  end  of  it  the  men  of  the  River- 
drift  had  probably  become  extinct,  and  their 
place  in  Europe  had  been  taken  and  held  for  ages 
by  the  boreal  Cave-men,  who  now  in  turn  were 
about  starting  on  their  long  retreat  to  the  arctic 
regions.  How  long  a  time  may  have  elapsed  be- 
fore the  swarthy  Iberian  settled  in  Europe,  with 
his  dogs  and  cattle,  we  have  no  means  of  decid- 


76  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ing ;  nor  can  we  say  when  the  blue-eyed  Aryan 
began  his  invasions,  though  we  know  that  this 
last  event  must  have  been  very  recent,  —  not 
very  long  before  the  dawn  of  history.  Nor  can 
we  tell  how  long  there  had  been  human  beings  on 
the  earth  before  the  Glacial  epoch  began.  But, 
as  I  have  said  already,  it  must  have  been  a  great 
while,  because,  even  before  the  close  of  the  Plio- 
cene age,  they  had  had  time  to  spread  over  the 
earth  as  far  as  Portugal  in  one  direction,  and  as 
far  as  California  in  the  other.  And  if  we  are  to 
take  the  date  of  240,000  years  ago  for  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Glacial  epoch,  we  can  hardly  allow 
for  the  close  of  the  Pliocene  age  an  antiquity  of 
less  than  400,000  years. 

It  only  remains  to  add  that  the  enormous 
length  of  time  during  which  the  human  race  has 
existed  is  of  itself  a  powerful  argument  in  favour 
of  the  opinion  —  now  generally  accepted  —  that 
the  human  race  was  originated,  by  a  slow  process 
of  development,  from  a  race  of  non-human  pri- 
mates, similar  to  the  anthropoid  apes.  We  see 
man  living  on  the  earth  for  perhaps  half  a  mill- 
ion years,  to  all  intents  and  purposes  dumb,  leav- 
ing none  but  a  geological  record  of  his  existence, 
progressing  with  infinite  slowness  and  difficulty, 
making  no  history.  Yet  his  geologic  record  is  not 


The  Arrival  of  Man  in  Europe.  77 

quite  like  that  of  the  dog  or  the  ape,  who  could 
not  chip  a  flint,  and  in  the  incised  antlers  of  the 
Cave-men  we  see  the  first  faint  gleams  of  the 
divine  intelligence  that  was  by  and  by  to  shine 
forth  with  the  glories  of  a  Michael  Angelo.  We 
cannot  but  suppose  that  during  those  long  dumb 
ages,  through  infinite  hardship  and  through  the 
stern  regimen  of  deadly  competition  and  natural 
selection,  man  was  slowly  but  surely  acquiring 
that  intellectual  life  which  was  at  last  to  bloorn 
forth  in  history,  and  which  has  made  him  "  the 
crown  and  glory  of  the  universe." 
January,  1882. 


in. 

OUR  ARYAN  FOREFATHERS. 

IN  the  beginning  of  the  Vendidad,  or  first  of 
the  Parsi  collection  of  sacred  books  known  as  the 
Zendavesta,  we  are  told  that  the  supreme  deity 
Ahura-Mazda  created  a  country  full  of  delights, 
but  difficult  of  access,  and  the  name  of  this  coun- 
try was  Aryana  Vaejo.  So  charming  was  this 
primitive  country  that,  had  it  not  been  made 
difficult  of  approach,  the  whole  animate  creation 
would  have  flocked  thither  and  quite  overwhelmed 
it.  But  this  state  of  things  did  not  long  con- 
tinue ;  for  Ahriman,  or  Anramainyus,  the  spirit 
of  darkness,  was  the  implacable  adversary  of  Or- 
muzd,  or  Ahura-Mazda,  the  spirit  of  light,  and 
took  pleasure  in  spoiling  all  his  creations.  So 
this  death-dealing  enemy,  with  the  aid  of  his 
daevas,  or  demons,  created  a  great  serpent  and 
brought  ten  months  of  winter  cold  upon  the  land, 
so  that  Aryana  Vaejo  was  no  longer  a  comfortable 
dwelling-place.  The  good  spirit  then  created  a 
new  home  for  his  people,  called  Sugdha ;  but  the 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  79 

adversary  spoiled  this  by  creating  a  kind  of  wasp 
which  devastated  the  fields  and  brought  death 
to  the  cattle.  Then  Ahura-Mazda  made  a  third 
habitat,  which  was  called  the  high  and  holy 
Muru  ;  but  the  dark  demon  now  whispered  evil 
reports  and  stirred  up  strife,  until  here,  too,  life 
became  unendurable,  and  the  beautiful  land  of 
Bakhdhi,  or  Baktria,  was  created  as  a  fourth 
home  for  the  children  of  light.  So  the  warfare 
went  on,  until  no  less  than  sixteen  countries  are 
enumerated  as  successively  created  and  made  un- 
comfortable. In  the  last  region  of  all  the  com- 
plaint is  again  of  cold  weather  and  hoar-frost; 
but  perhaps  in  comparison  with  all  the  other 
plagues  this  now  seemed  endurable.  At  all 
events,  the  account  here  ends,  with  the  admission 
that  there  are  also  other  regions  and  places  be- 
sides those  described ;  as  much  as  to  say  that 
we  are  not  here  concerned  with  the  history  of 
all  mankind,  but  only  with  the  worshippers  of 
Ahura-Mazda. 

The  book  from  which  this  legend  is  cited  is  one 
of  the  oldest  in  the  literature  of  the  world.  It 
belongs  to  a  more  primitive  age  than  the  Homeric 
poems,  and  may  probably  be  regarded  as  con- 
temporary with  the  oldest  hymns  of  the  Ved;i. 
Written  not  in  the  court  language  of  ancient 


80  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Persia,  but  in  the  closely-related  archaic  dialect 
of  Baktria,  —  very  much  as  the  ecclesiastical 
services  of  Russia  to-day  are  written  in  Old  Bul- 
garian, —  the  Zendavesta  was,  in  the  time  of 
Darius  Hystaspes,  the  sacred  book  of  the  most 
prominent  nation  in  the  world.  For  eleven  hun- 
dred years  afterward  the  worship  of  Ahura-Mazda 
retained  its  ascendency  in  the  countries  between 
Euphrates  and  the  Indus,  until  in  the  seventh 
century  after  Christ  this  whole  region  was  over- 
run by  Mohammedans,  and  converted  to  their 
faith.  For  a  long  time,  no  doubt,  the  Magian 
religion  continued  to  survive  alongside  of  Islam, 
as  we  see  from  the  frequent  allusions  to  "  fire- 
worshippers  "  in  the  "  Arabian  Nights,"  where 
they  are  indeed  most  abominably  slandered.  But 
after  a  while  the  good  Ahura-Mazda,  yielding  to 
this  last  and  gravest  mischief  wrought  by  the  ad- 
versary, devised  yet  another  abode  for  the  rem- 
nant of  his  people,  and  led  them  to  Bombay  and 
its  neighbourhood,  where,  under  the  name  of 
"  Parsis,"  or  "  Persians,"  they  still  keep  up  their 
old  ceremonies  and  their  old  faith. 

The  legend  of  the  sixteen  countries  created  by 
the  good  spirit  was  regarded  by  Bunsen  as  a 
historical  tradition  of  the  migrations  by  which 
the  ancestors  of  the  Indo-Persians  reached  the 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  81 

countries  where,  at  the  beginning  of  authentic 
history,  we  find  their  descendants.  But  it  will 
not  do  to  attach  too  much  historical  value  to 
legends  like  this.  For,  however  venerable  may 
be  the  record,  the  very  mist  of  antiquity  which 
shrouds  it  prevents  us  from  knowing  how  or 
whence  it  got  the  information  which  it  imparts. 
The  story  before  us,  indeed,  has  neither  the  pre- 
tensions nor  the  credentials  of  an  authentic  his- 
torical narrative.  It  relates  long-past  events  as 
ascertained  not  through  the  sifting  of  previous 
human  testimony,  but  by  direct  revelation  from 
the  good  spirit  to  his  prophet  Zarathustra  or 
Zoroaster.  Nevertheless,  the  geographical  succes- 
sion of  the  various  places  mentioned  in  this  le- 
gend is  very  suggestive.  With  the  exception  of 
Aryana  Vaejo,  every  one  of  the  sixteen  abodes 
seems  to  be  described  by  a  genuine  geographical 
name,  though  two  or  three  have  not  yet  been  satis- 
factorily determined.  Thus  Sugdha,  the  second 
country,  is  what  the  ancients  knew  as  Sogdiana ; 
Muru  appears  to  be  the  modern  Merv,  or  Mar- 
giana ;  and  Baktria,  the  next  in  order,  has  been 
already  mentioned.  And  so,  curiously  enough,  by 
stringing  together  the  whole  series  of  names,  there 
is  indicated  a  continuous  migration  from  the  region 
beyond  the  Oxus,  at  first  southwesterly,  and  then 
6 


82  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

southeasterly,  down  to  what  we  now  call  the  Pun- 
jab, or  "  country  of  five  rivers,"  but  which  in  the 
Vedic  hymns  is  somewhat  more  comprehensively 
termed  the  Sapta-Sindhavas,  or  "  Seven  Rivers," 
and  which  in  our  Zend  legend  is  described  in  iden- 
tical language  as  the  Hapta  Hendu.  This  larger 
designation  is  reached  by  including,  along  with  the 
five  rivers  of  the  Punjab,  the  Sarasvati  and  the 
Indus,  or  "  The  River,"  par  excellence.  Having 
thus  reached  the  northwestern  confines  of  Hindu- 
stan, in  the  fifteenth  country  created  by  Ahura- 
Mazda,  the  legend  here  informs  us  that  Anramain- 
yus  devised"  untimely  evils  and  unbearable  heat ; " 
and  thereupon  we  are  abruptly  transported,  in  the 
sixteenth  region,  to  the  cool  neighbourhood  of  the 
Caspian  Sea,  perhaps  the  country  of  the  Medes. 

Now,  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  accept  such 
an  account  as  properly  historical,  the  course  of 
migration  here  indicated  is  so  thoroughly  in  ac- 
cordance with  all  that  we  know  of  the  relations 
between  the  peoples  of  the  Persian  Empire  and 
the  dominant  race  of  Hindus  in  India  that  it  is 
hard  not  to  grant  to  it  some  traditionary  value. 
It  would  appear,  at  least,  that  when  the  Vendidad 
was  composed  the  worshippers  of  Ahura-Mazda 
must  have  believed  that  their  ancestors  came  from 
somewhere  beyond  the  Oxus,  and  travelled  in  the 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  83 

direction  of  Hindustan,  until  something  occurred 
which  turned  them  westward  again.  This  would 
seem  to  be  the  only  sound  meaning  that  can  be 
extracted  from  the  legend.  But  this  is  in  wonder- 
ful accordance  with  the  results  of  modern  critical 
inquiry.  From  a  minute  survey  of  the  languages 
and  legends  of  this  whole  region,  it  has  been  well 
established  that  the  dominant  race  in  ancient 
Persia  and  in  ancient  India  was  one  and  the 
same ;  that  it  approached  India  from  the  north- 
west; and  that  a  great  religious  schism  was  ac- 
companied by  the  westward  migration  of  a  large 
part  of  the  community,  while  the  other  part  pro- 
ceeded onward,  and  established  itself  in  Hindu- 
stan. A  comparison  of  the  Zenda vesta  with  the 
Veda  —  so  strongly  alike  as  they  are,  both  in 
thought  and  in  expression  —  shows  clearly  that 
the  occasion  of  this  schism  must  have  been  the 
promulgation  of  the  worship  of  Ahura-Mazda. 

In  illustration  of  this  community  of  origin  be- 
tween the  Vedic  and  Zendavestan  peoples,  let  ua 
refer  to  the  name  of  the  first  country  which  the 
supreme  deity  created, —  the  name  of  Aryana 
Vaejo.  This,  as  already  hinted,  is  not  a  geo- 
graphical name.  There  is  no  identifiable  locality 
which  has  ever  been  called  Aryana  Vaejo.  The 
name  means  simpiy  "the  starting-place  of  the 


84  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Aryans."  In  later  Persian  mythology,  as  repre- 
sented in  the  Minokhired,  the  name  came  to  stand 
for  a  terrestrial  paradise,  where  men  live  for  three 
hundred  years,  without  pain  or  sickness,  where  no 
lies  are  told,  and  where  ten  men  eat  of  one  loaf 
and  grow  fat  thereon.  In  the  Vendidad,  however, 
'  Aryana  Vaejo  is  simply  the  primeval  dwelling- 
place,  whatever  it  may  have  been,  from  which  the 
Aryans  passed  into  Sogdiana.  Now  "  Aryan " 
was  the  name  by  which  the  ancient  Persians  and 
the  ancient  Hindus  alike  described  themselves. 
In  the  Vedic  hymns  the  dominant  people  of  India 
habitually  speak  of  themselves  as  Aryans,  in  con- 
trast with  the  Dasyus,  or  inferior  races  of  Hindu- 
stan, whom  they  had  subdued.  Just  in  the  same 
way  Darius  Hystaspes,  in  the  inscription  upon  his 
tomb,  declares  himself  to  be  an  Aryan,  of  Aryan 
descent.  The  Medes  are  always  called  Aryans 
by  Armenian  writers  ;  and  Herodotos  was  also 
familiar  with  this  appellation.  In  a  more  special 
sense  the  countries  between  India  and  Persia,  now 
known  as  Afghanistan  and  Cabul,  were  known 
throughout  classic  antiquity  as  Ariana.  Along 
with  this  community  of  name  there  was  close 
community  of  speech  among  these  peoples.  The 
court  language  of  the  Medes  and  Persians,  as  pre- 
served in  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Darius,  the 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  85 

Zend  or  Baktrian  language,  in  which  the  sacred 
books  of  Zarathustra  are  written,  and  the  San- 
skrit of  the  Vedic  hymns  are  as  clearly  dialects  of 
the  same  parental  language  as  French,  Spanish, 
and  Italian  are  dialects  of  Latin.  These  outline 
facts  are  all  that  we  need  for  the  present  to  show 
how  Aryan  was  the  common  name  for  a  race 
which,  advancing  from  the  north,  acquired  su- 
premacy over  all  the  country  between  the  Eu- 
phrates and  the  mouth  of  the  Ganges.  Whence 
these  people  originally  came  it  would  be  idle  to 
inquire,  but  we  may  fairly  conclude  that  they  first 
attained  to  something  like  world-historic  impor- 
tance in  the  highlands  of  central  Asia,  somewhere 
about  the  sources  of  the  Oxus  and  the  Jaxartes ; 
and  this  region  we  regard  as  "  Aryana  Vaejo,"  or 
the  most  aboriginal  spot  to  which  we  are  able  to 
trace  the  Aryan  people. 

We  have  next  to  inquire  into  the  meaning  of 
the  word  Aryan  ;  and  this  is  not  a  difficult  matter, 
or  one  about  which  there  is  much  question.  In 
Sanskrit  the  word  arya,  with  a  short  initial  a,  is 
applied  to  cultivators  of  the  soil,  and  it  would 
seem  to  be  connected  etymologically  with  the 
Latin  arare  and  the  archaic  English  ear,  "to 
plow."  As  men  who  had  risen  to  an  agricultural 
stage  of  civilization,  the  Aryans  might  n^  doubt 


86  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

fairly  contrast  themselves  with  their  nomadic  Tu- 
ranian neighbours,  who  —  as  Huns,  Tatars,  and 
Turks  —  have  at  different  times  disturbed  the 
Indo-European  world.  But  for  the  real  source 
of  the  word,  as  applied  to  the  race,  we  must  look 
further.  This  word  arya,  "  a  cultivator  of  the 
soil,"  came  naturally  enough  in  Sanskrit  to  mean 
a  householder  or  land-owner,  and  hence  it  is  not 
strange  that  we  find  it  re-occurring,  with  a  long 
initial  a,  as  an  adjective,  meaning  "  noble  "  or 
"of  good  family."  As  a  national  appellative, 
whether  in  Sanskrit  or  Zend,  this  initial  a  is  al- 
ways long,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
Aryans  gave  themselves  this  title  as  being  the 
noble,  aristocratic,  or  ruling  race,  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  the  aboriginal  races  which  they  brought 
into  servitude.  In  this  sense  of  noble,  the  word 
frequently  occurs  in  the  composition  of  Persian 
proper  names,  such  as  Ariobarzanes,  Ariaramnes, 
and  Ariarathes ;  just  as  in  old  English  we  have 
the  equivalent  word  ethel,  or  noble,  in  such  namrs 
as  Ethelwolf  and  Ethelred.  As  an  ethnic  name, 
therefore,  the  word  Aryan  seems  to  have  a  tinge 
of  patriotic  or  clannish  self-satisfaction  about  it. 
But  we  shall  find,  I  think,  that  such  a  shade  of 
meaning  has  been  more  than  justified  by  history ; 
for  we  have  now  reached  a  point  where  we  may 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  87 

profitably  enlarge  the  scope  of  our  discussion,  and 
show  how  the  term  Aryan  is  properly  applicable, 
not  merely  over  an  Indo-Persian,  but  over  an 
Indo-European  area,  comprehending  the  most 
dominant  races  known  to  history,  —  the  Greeks 
and  Romans,  Slavs  and  Teutons,  with  the  highly- 
composite  English,  whose  language  and  civiliza- 
tion are  now  spreading  themselves  with  unex- 
ampled rapidity  over  all  the  hitherto  unoccupied 
regions  of  the  earth,  which  the  Vendidad  did  not 
care  or  did  not  know  how  to  specify.  In  order 
to  explain  in  what  sense  we  may  all  properly  be 
called  Aryans,  we  must  consider  for  a  moment 
some  of  the  striking  results  which  have  been 
obtained,  within  the  present  century,  from  the 
comparative  study  of  languages. 

No  event  of  modern  times  has  exerted  a  more 
profound  and  manifold  influence  upon  the  intel- 
lectual culture  of  mankind  than  the  English  con- 
quest of  India.  The  enlargement  of  our  mental 
horizon  which  has  resulted  therefrom  is  not  less 
remarkable  than  that  which  attended  the  revival 
of  Greek  studies  in  the  fifteenth  century.  It  is 
not  simply  that  observation  of  India  is  making  us 
acquainted  with  an  enormous  multitude  of  prim- 
itive social,  linguistic,  and  religious  phenomena 
which  formerly  were  hidden  from  our  notice.  In 


88  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

contemplating  these  phenomena,  we  have  become 
possessed  of  a  method  of  study  which  has  already 
wrought  such  wonders  as  to  vie  with  the  oint- 
ment of  the  Arabian  dervise,  that  enabled  its 
owner  to  detect  all  the  buried  treasures  of  the 
earth.  This  mighty  talisman  is  the  Comparative 
Method,  or  the  attempt  to  interpret  a  fact  by 
comparing  it  with  a  series  of  similar  facts,  which 
different  circumstances  have  caused  to  vary  in  dif- 
ferent degrees.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  man- 
kind have  not  always  used  this  method  more  or 
less,  both  in  matters  of  science  and  in  matters  of 
every-day  life.  Nor  do  I  mean  to  claim  for  mod- 
ern philology  any  exclusive  title  to  the  honour  of 
having  shown  what  can  be  done  by  studying 
phenomena  in  this  way.  I  do  not  forget  that 
the  classification  of  living  and  extinct  animals  by 
Cuvier,  with  reference  to  palgeontological  epochs, 
was  a  gigantic  act  of  comparison,  which  first 
made  it  possible  for  us  to  understand  the  past 
history  of  life  on  our  globe.  It  is  none  the  less 
true  not  only  that  systematic  employment  of  the 
comparative  method  on  an  extensive  scale  is  the 
most  notable  philosophic  achievement  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  but  also  that  its  first  great  tri- 
umph was  the  establishment  of  the  Aryan,  or 
Indo-European,  family  of  languages.  This  tri- 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  89 

umph  was  prepared  by  the  study  of  Sanskrit, 
which  ensued  upon  the  English  conquest  of  In- 
dia. Previous  to  this,  indeed,  the  close  resem- 
blance between  Greek  and  Latin  had  been  often 
enough  remarked,  and  theories  had  been  enter- 
tained concerning  a  primeval  kinship  between  the 
peoples  of  Greece  and  Italy.  But  in  the  case  of 
peoples  so  similar  in  aspect  and  so  closely  con- 
nected with  one  another  from  time  immemorial, 
this  similarity  of  speech  did  not  provoke  much 
curiosity.  It  was  quite  otherwise  when  a  lan- 
guage unmistakably  akin  to  Greek  and  Latin, 
both  in  grammar  and  vocabulary,  was  discovered 
in  such  an  out-of-the-way  country  as  Hindustan, 
and  among  a  people  who  had  hitherto  been  gen- 
erally supposed  to  be  barbarians.  The  discovery 

• 

was  emphasized  by  the  fact  that  no  such  obvious 
resemblances  existed  in  Hebrew,  a  language  much 
nearer  geographically  and  historically,  and  from 
which  there  had  been  no  end  of  futile  attempts 
to  derive  Latin  and  Greek.  Further  interest  was 
excited  when  it  became  known  that  this  newly- 
found  language  contained  an  enormous  mass  of 
literature  alleged  to  be  the  oldest  in  the  world. 
All  things  thus  combined  to  stimulate  specula- 
tion as  to  the  true  character  of  the  relationship 
between  Sanskrit  and  the  languages  of  Greece 


90  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

and  Rome.  This  relationship  was  not  one  of  par- 
entage. It  has  been  a  common  popular  error 
to  suppose  that  Latin  and  Greek  are  derived 
from  Sanskrit ;  but  from  the  first  no  such  view 
was  countenanced  by  competent  scholars.  About 
1790,  Sir  William  Jones  declared  his  opinion  that 
the  three  languages  were  sprung  from  "some 
common  source,  which  perhaps  no  longer  exists." 
Persian  also  he  was  inclined  to  attribute  to  the 
same  source,  and  he  hinted  at  the  possibility 
that  Gothic  and  Keltic  might  be  included  in  the 
group.  This  was  coming  very  near  to  the  con- 
ception of  an  Indo-European  family  of  languages. 
But  that  conception  was  not  clearly  formed  until 
nearly  twenty  years  later,  and  then  it  was  reached 
not  by  a  great  philological  scholar,  but  by  a  poet 
and  literary  critic.  In  1808,  Friedrich  Schlegel 
maintained  that  the  languages  of  India,  Persia, 
Greece,  Italy,  and  Germany  were  connected  by 
common  descent  from  an  extinct  language,  just 
as  the  modern  Romanic  languages  are  connected 
by  common  descent  from  Latin ;  and  for  the  whole 
family  he  proposed  the  name  Indo-Germanic. 
The  correctness  of  this  view  was  demonstrated  by 
Bopp,  in  his  "  Comparative  Grammar,"  published 
from  1833  to  1852,  in  which  the  Zend,  Armenian, 
Slavonic,  and  Lithuanian  languages  also  were 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  91 

added  to  the  group.  The  Keltic  languages  were 
included  about  the  same  time,  and  the  name 
Indo-Germanic  was  extended  to  Indo-European. 
Within  the  last  fifteen  years  —  mainly  through 
the  influence  of  Max  Miiller's  writings  —  the 
name  Aryan  has  come  into  general  use  as  the 
most  convenient  designation  of  the  whole  family. 
The  use  of  the  word  in  this  extensive  sense  has 
indeed  been  objected  to  by  Professor  Whitney 
and  others,  who  urge  that  it  is  properly  applica- 
ble only  to  the  Indo-Persian  branch  of  the  fam- 
ily ;  and  in  strictness  their  argument  seems  to  be 
sound  enough.  There  is  no  evidence  that  any  of 
the  European  peoples  have  ever  called  themselves 
Aryans,  and  the  traces  of  the  name  which  Miiller 
has  sought  to  point  out  in  Europe  are  very  scanty 
and  obscure.  According  to  Stephanus  of  Byzan- 
tium, Aria  was  an  old  name  for  Thrace,  and 
among  the  ancient  Germans  we  find  a  tribe  of 
Arii  and  such  proper  names  as  Ariovistus  ;  but  it 
is  by  no  means  certain  that  these  names  are  in 
any  way  connected  with  the  original  Arya.  Nor 
did  Pictet  meet  with  any  better  success  in  his  at- 
tempt to  find  Arya  in  the  name  of  Erin  or  Ire- 
land, the  home  of  the  Eri,  or  Irish.  This  modern 
name  is  a  contracted  form.  Its  root  in  old  Keltic 
seems  to  have  been  Iver,  which  is  the  same  as  the 


92  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Sanskrit  avara,  "western."  It  appears  in  the 
Latin  Avernus,  a  famous  lake  on  the  west  coast 
of  Italy,  as  well  as  in  Ivernia,  or  Hibernia,  the 
western  island.  This  old  word  Iver  has  been 
shortened  to  Ir  or  Er,  and  out  of  this,  by  putting 
on  their  own  terminations,  the  English  have  made 
Ire-land,  the  home  of  the  Ir-ish,  or  "Westerners." 
But  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  find  no  certain 
traces  of  the  name  Aryan  in  the  European  lan- 
guages, I  believe  that  the  modern  use  of  the  word, 
as  descriptive  of  the  whole  family,  is  likely  to 
prevail.  It  is  a  much  less  cumbrous  term  than 
"  Indo-European,"  and,  while  it  is  advantageously 
free  from  geographical  restrictions,  it  emphasizes, 
at  the  same  time,  the  fundamental  fact  that  the 
Aryana  Vaejo,  or  prehistoric  starting-point  of  the 
eastern  members  of  the  family,  was  also  the  start- 
ing-point of  the  western  members.  It  implies  — 
what  every  one  admits  to  be  true  —  that  the 
dominant  race  in  Europe  came  from  central  Asia. 
And,  still  further,  it  serves  admirably  as  a  name 
for  the  extinct  mother  tongue  from  which  all  the 
Indo-European  languages  have  descended.  By 
many  scholai*s  this  primitive  tongue  is  itself  called 
Indo-European ;  but  I  am  unable  to  see  any  pro- 
priety in  giving  such  a  name  to  a  language  which, 
as  being  confessedly  spoken  north  of  the  Oxus 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  93 

and  east  of  the  Caspian,  was  certainly  neither  In- 
dian nor  European  in  any  sense.  It  seems  to  me 
much  better,  and  more  in  conformity  to  the  gen- 
eral style  of  philologists,  to  call  this  ancestral 
language  "  Old  Aryan,"  just  as  we  say  "  Old 
Norse  "  for  the  primitive  form  of  Danish,  Swed- 
ish, and  Norwegian. 

As  we  now  proceed  to  take  a  brief  survey  of  the 
Aryan  domain,  I  think  we  shall  realize  the  ad- 
vantage of  having  a  word  that  is  independent  of 
geographical  limits.  The  Aryana  of  the  present 
day  is  much  more  than  an  Indo-European  region. 
Its  eastern  boundaries  have  altered  but  little  for 
many  centuries ;  but  on  the  west  it  has  extended 
o  the  Pacific  coast  of  America,  and  on  the  other 
side  of  the  world  it  has  begun  to  annex  territory 
in  South  Africa  and  Australia.  Indeed,  if  we  are 
to  judge  from  what  has  been  going  on  since  the 
times  of  Drake  and  Frobisher,  it  seems  in  every 
way  likely  that  men  of  English  speech  will  by 
and  by  have  seized  upon  every  part  of  the  earth's 
surface  not  already  covered  by  a  well-established 
civilization,  and  will  have  converted  them  all  into 
Aryan  countries.  But  our  linguistic  term  Aryan 
is  independent  of  such  changes.  Since  prehistoric 
times  eight  principal  divisions  of  Aryan  speech 
have  existed,  but  these  groups  of  languages  have 


94  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

had  very  different  careers,  and  some  of  them  are 
rapidly  becoming  extinct.  The  first  great  separa- 
tion of  Aryan  tribes  was  the  separation  between 
the  invaders  of  Indo-Persia  and  the  invaders  of 
Europe.  We  have  already  observed  how  the 
language  of  the  Indo-Persians  became  divided  in 
twain.  In  the  Indie  class  of  languages,  compris- 
ing the  classical  Sanskrit,  the  Prakrit  of  later 
dramatic  writers,  the  Pali,  or  sacred  language  of 
the  Buddhists  in  Ceylon,  and  some  twenty  mod- 
ern dialects  spoken  chiefly  in  the  northern  half 
of  Hindustan,  we  have  the  first  grand  division  of 
Aryan  speech.  The  second  or  Iranic  class  com- 
prehends the  Zend,  the  ancient  Persian  of  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions,  the  Parsi  of  Bombay,  the 
Pushtu  of  Afghanistan,  modern  Persian,  Ar- 
menian, Kurdish,  and  the  Ossetian  spoken  in  the 
Caucasus.  Concerning  these  two  grand  divisions, 
we  need  only  observe  that  the  extremely  close 
resemblance  between  Sanskrit  and  Zend  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  the  separation  of  the  two 
occurred  at  a  comparatively  late  date,  though  it 
would  perhaps  be  difficult  to  suppose  it  later  than 
two  thousand  years  before  Christ.  It  may  have 
been  a  little  before  this  that  the  western  tribes  of 
Aryans  crossed  the  Volga  and  began  the  conquest 
of  Europe.  First  appear  to  have  come  the  Kelts, 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  95 

whose  languages  constitute  the  third  great  divis- 
ion. These  languages  diverge  considerably  from 
the  common  type,  and  were  the  latest  to  be  recog- 
nized as  Aryan  in  character,  —  a  fact  which  is 
quite  in  harmony  with  the  opinion  that  they  were 
the  first  to  branch  off  from  the  original  stock. 
The  Kelts  have  always  been  an  important  race, 
but  their  languages  have  not  thriven  in  the 
world.  Keltic  geographical  names  are  scattered 
all  over  Europe,  and  in  the  eastern  part  such 
words  as  Dnieper,  Don,  and  Danube  testify  to  the 
former  presence  of  the  language  in  which  don 
was  a  common  name  for  water  or  river.  The 
Kelts  formed  a  large  part  of  the  populations  of 
Spain  and  northern  Italy,  and  a  principal  part  of 
the  populations  of  Gaul  and  Britain,  when  these 
countries  were  subjected  to  Roman  dominion;  and 
as  late  as  the  Christian  era  they  were  to  be  found 
in  large  numbers  as  far  east  as  Bohemia.  Since 
then  they  have  been  partly  conquered  and  partly 
driven  westward  by  Romans  and  Teutons,  without 
ceasing  to  be  conspicuous  as  a  race ;  but  their 
languages  have  sunk  into  comparative  obscurity, 
and  are  fast  disappearing.  The  Gauls,  who  showed 
such  a  remarkable  aptitude  for  taking  on  the 
manners  of  their  conquerors  that  by  the  fourth 
century  their  country  was  almost  as  thoroughly 


96  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Romanized  as  Italy  itself,  forgot  their  own  lan- 
guage with  wonderful  ease.  It  was  so  completely 
trampled  out  by  Latin  that  very  scanty  vestiges 
remain  to  show  what  it  was,  if  we  except  geo- 
graphical names.  At  the  present  day  two  groups 
of  Keltic  languages  remain :  the  Gaelic,  still 
spoken  in  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  the  Isle  of  Man  ; 
and  the  Kymric,  or  old  British,  which  survives  in 
Welsh  and  in  the  dialect  of  Brittany.  A  third 
dialect  of  Kymric  was  formerly  spoken  in  Corn- 
wall, but  it  died  in  1770  with  Dame  Dolly  Dent- 
reath. 

Concerning  the  fourth  and  fifth  grand  divisions 
of  Aryan  speech  —  the  Italic  and  Hellenic  —  but 
little  need  be  said.  These  languages  are  too  il- 
lustrious to  stand  in  need  of  much  description. 
The  relationship  between  them  is  closer  than  in 
the  case  of  any  other  Aryan  languages  of  differ- 
ent class,  save  the  Zend  and  Sanskrit ;  and  this 
close  resemblance  justifies  the  inference  that  the 
separation  between  Greeks  and  Italians  was  com- 
paratively recent.  They  would  appear  to  have 
entered  Europe  somewhat  later  than  the  Kelts, 
but  everything  connected  with  their  prehistoric 
career  is  extremely  problematical.  To  the  Hel- 
lenic class  belong  only  two  languages,  —  the  un- 
cultivated Albanian  and  the  Greek,  which  was  ste- 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  97 

reotyped  so  early  and  so  thoroughly  by  literary  cul- 
ture that  to  the  Athenian  school-boy  of  to-day  the 
history  of  Herodotos  can  hardly  seem  written  in 
a  foreign  tongue.  To  the  Italic  class  belong  the 
ancient  Umbrian  and  Oscan  and  the  Latin,  which 
still  survives  under  the  variously  modified  forms 
of  Italian,  French,  Proven9al,  Spanish,  Portuguese, 
Rumansch,  and  Wallachian.  To  the  linguist  the 
history  of  these  Romanic  dialects  is  peculiarly  val- 
uable, as  illustrating,  with  the  aid  of  plentiful 
documents,  a  process  of  divergence  somewhat 
similar  to  that  which  previously  broke  up  the  Old 
Aryan  into  different  languages. 

The  Teutons,  whose  languages  form  our  sixth 
grand  division,  seem  to  have  entered  Europe  after 
the  tribes  already  mentioned.  About  Caesar's  time 
we  find  Teutons  driving  Kelts  out  of  Germany, 
and  threatening  to  overrun  Gaul ;  but  during 
most  of  classic  antiquity  the  centre  of  Teutonism 
seems  to  have  been  farther  east  than  Germany. 
The  greater  part  of  what  is  now  European  Turkey 
was  occupied  by  Goths  in  the  time  of  Herodotos, 
and  for  eight  centuries  afterwards.  The  ancient 
Thr^cians  were  Goths,  according  to  Grimm,  and 
so  were  the  Getse.  And  since  the  Christian  era 
Teutonic  tribes  appeared  in  what  is  now  south- 
ern Russia.  The  terrible  irruption  of  non-Aryan 

7 


98  ^Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Huns  from  Asia,  in  the  fifth  century,  drove  these 
tribes  westward,  and  brought  them  into  collision 
witli  the  Empire.  Of  the  Gothic  language  noth- 
ing remains  save  a  portion  of  a  translation  of  the 
Bible,  made  by  Ulfilas  in  the  fourth  century. 
The  other  branches  of  Teutonic  speech  —  Scan- 
dinavian, High  German,  and  Low  German,  of 
which  our  own  English  is  the  most  important 
dialect  —  are  too  well  known  to  require  comment. 

The  seventh  and  eighth  grand  divisions  of  Ar- 
yan language  are  the  closely  -  related  Lettic  and 
Slavonic.  The  Lettic  languages,  like  the  Keltic, 
are  fast  dying  out.  Of  Old  Prussian,  which  has 
been  dead  for  two  centuries,  nothing  is  now  left 
save  the  Catechism  of  Albert  of  Brandenburg. 
Lettish  and  Lithuanian,  of  which  the  latter  is  re- 
markable for  its  strong  resemblance  to  Sanskrit, 
are  still  spoken  in  the  Baltic  provinces  of  Russia. 

As  for  the  Slavs,  they  appear  in  history  north  of 
the  Black  Sea  about  the  time  of  Trajan,  and  be- 
gin to  be  frequently  mentioned  in  the  sixth  cen- 
tury. Since  then  they  have  pushed  westward  far 
into  the  Teutonic  domain,  but  have  nowhere,  save 
in  Russia,  retained  political  independence.  Qf  the 
fifteen  or  more  Slavonic  languages,  the  old  Bul- 
garian and  the  modern  Russian,  Polish,  Bohemian, 
Croatian,  and  Serbian  are  of  most  importance. 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  99 

Looking  thus  over  our  modern  linguistic  Ar- 
yana,  we  see  that  in  the  Old  World  it  pretty 
nearly  covers  the  geographical  area  included  be- 
tween the  Ganges  and  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  Small 
regions  of  non-Aryan  speech,  however,  occur  here 
and  there  within  this  area,  and  a  brief  glance  at 
these  will  serve  to  increase  the  defiuiteness  of  our 
knowledge. 

Wherever  non- Aryan  languages  are  spoken 
within  this  Indo-European  domain,  it  is  for  either 
one  of  two  reasons.  Such  languages  are  spoken 
either  by  descendants  of  the  aboriginal  tribes, 
whom  the  invading  Aryans  overcame,  or  by  de- 
scendants of  non-Aryan  invaders,  who  have  pushed 
in  at  a  later  date,  and  secured  for  themselves  a 
lodgment  upon  Aryan  soil.  Of  the  first  class  we 
find  a  few  sporadic  instances.  The  language  vari- 
ously called  the  Bask,  Euskarian,  or  Iberian,  now 
spoken  in  the  Asturias  and  about  the  Pyrenees, 
has  no  similarity  whatever  to  the  Aryan  lan- 
guages. It  is  spoken  by  the  scanty  remnant  of  a 
people  who  in  immemorial  antiquity  seem  to  have 
been  s'pread  all  over  western  Europe,  but  who 
were  for  the  most  part  conquered  and  absorbed 
by  the  Keltic  van  of  the  Aryan  invasion.  The 
case  may  have  been  similar  with  the  lapygian 
and  Etruskan,  which  were  long  ago  trampled  out 


100  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

in  Italy  by  the  Latin  :  but  on  this  obscure  point 
I  would  hardly  venture  an  opinion.  In  northern 
Europe,  Finnish,  Esthonian,  and  Lappisli  are  still 
spoken  by  races  pushed  into  the  corner  by  Teu- 
tons and  Slavs.  A  perfect  Babel  of  aboriginal 
dialects  still  exists  in  the  inaccessible  fastnesses 
of  the  Caucasus ;  and  many  of  the  highlands  of 
India  similarly  shelter  primitive  non-Aryan  tribes, 
whose  forefathers  refused  to  submit  to  Brahmanic 
oppression.  It  is  a  characteristic  of  such  rem- 
nants of  conquered  speech  to  subsist  only  in  out- 
of-the-way  or  undesirable  corners.  On  the  other 
hand,  Turkish  and  Hungarian  are  foreign  tongues 
brought  into  the  Indo-European  area  by  recent 
intruders.  Both  these  languages  belong  to  the 
Altaic,  Turanian,  or  Tataric  family,  spoken  by 
nomadic  tribes  all  over  northern  Asia,  and  in- 
cluding in  Europe  the  Finnish  and  its  congeners 
above  mentioned.  The  Hungarian  has  especially 
strong  affinities  with  the  Finnish,  while  the  near- 
est relatives  to  Turkish  are  to  be  found  about 
Khiva  and  Bokhara,  in  the  Tataric  region  which 
Russia  is  so  rapidly  subjugating. 

We  have  now  arrived  at  a  tolerably  correct 
idea  of  what  is  meant  by  the  word  Aryan.  But 
one  important  point  must  not  be  overlooked.  In 
its  modern  sense  we  have  seen  that  the  word  is  a 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  101 

linguistic  term.  It  describes  community  of  lan- 
guage. As  we  now  use  the  word,  Aryans  are 
people  who  speak  Aryan,  or  Indo-European,  lan- 
guages. It  is  only  in  a  secondary  way  that  this 
word  can  be  used  as  an  ethnological  term,  describ- 
ing community  of  race.  We  are  so  accustomed 
to  consider  language  a  mark  of  race  that  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  avoid  using  linguistic  epithets  in  an  eth- 
nological sense,  and  a  good  deal  of  confused  think- 
ing sometimes  results  from  this.  We  have  above 
alluded  to  the  Aryans  as  a  dominant  race,  which 
long  since  overran  Europe  and  is  now  spreading 
over  America ;  yet  it  is  easy  to  see  that  we  have 
no  means  of  determining  how  far  the  various 
peoples  who  speak  Aryan  languages  are  of  com- 
mon descent.  It  is  never  safe  to  use  language  as 
a  direct  criterion  of  race,  for  speech  and  blood 
depend  on  different  sets  of  circumstances,  which 
do  not  always  vary  together.  We  of  the  English 
race  have  much  Keltic  blood  in  our  veins,  but  very 
few  Keltisms  in  our  speech  ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  with  a  vocabulary  nearly  half  made  up  of 
Latin  words,  we  have  either  no  Roman  blood  in 
our  veins,  or  so  little  as  not  to  be  worth  mention- 
ing. During  the  past  twenty-five  years  French- 
men have  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about  the  "  Latin 
race."  There  could  hardly  be  a  morv  tlagrant 


102          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

instance  of  the  perversion  of  a  linguistic  name  to 
ethnological  purposes.  In  reality,  even  in  Cse- 
sar's  time,  the  dominant  tribes  of  Latin m  had  be- 
come well-nigh  absorbed  in  the  non-Latin,  though 
kindred,  Italic  races  which  had  succumbed  to 
them.  After  Gaul  had  been  conquered,  it  learned 
Roman  manners,  but  without  receiving  any  very 
large  infusion  of  Roman  blood.  In  point  of  race 
the  French  are  Kelts,  with  a  considerable  sub- 
stratum of  Iberian  and  superstratum  of  Teutonic 
blood,  —  the  former  chiefly  in  the  south,  the  lat- 
ter chiefly  in  the  north.  Between  Frenchmen, 
Spaniards,  and  northern  Italians  there  is,  indeed, 
a  close  ethnic  affinity  ;  but  this  is  because  they 
are  all  to  a  great  extent  Kelts,  not  because  they 
have  all  learned  to  speak  dialects  of  Latin. 

Now  if  we  pursue  the  matter  a  little  farther, 
and  inquire  what  we  mean  by  saying  that  these 
three  peoples  are  in  great  part  Keltic,  we  shall 
find  that  a  similar  qualification  is  needed.  Ob- 
viously, we  mean  that  they  are  Keltic  in  so  far 
as  they  are  descended  from  people  who  formerly 
spoke  Keltic  languages.  Our  knowledge  of  the 
prehistoric  career  of  the  Kelts  is  too  small  to  ad- 
mit of  our  meaning  more  than  this.  In  just  the 
same  way,  when  we  say  that  Spaniards  and  Eng- 
lishmen and  Russians  are  akin  to  each  other  as 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  103 

being  Aryans,  we  can  only  mean  that  they  are 
in  great  part  descended  from  people  who  spoke 
Aryan  languages. 

There  can  be  little  doubt,  however,  that  all 
races  which  have  long  wandered  and  fought  have 
become  composite  to  a  degree  past  deciphering. 
And,  however  mixed  may  have  been  the  blood  of 
the  Aryan-speaking  invaders  of  Europe,  it  re- 
mains undeniable  that  the  possession  of  a  common 
language  by  such  great  multitudes  of  people  im- 
plies a  very  long  period  of  time,  during  which 
their  careers  must  have  been  moulded  by  circum- 
stances in  common.  It  implies  common  habits 
of  thought  and  a  common  civilization,  such  as  it 
was.  And  this  inference  is  fully  confirmed  by  a 
comparative  study  of  the  myths  and  superstitions, 
as  well  as  of  the  primitive  legal  ideas  and  social 
customs  of  the  various  parts  of  the  Indo-European 
world.  For  this  reason  I  think  we  are  justified 
in  speaking  of  the  Aryan  race  just  as  we  speak, 
without  error,  of  the  English  race,  though  we 
know  that  many  race  elements  have  combined 
their  energies  in  the  great  work  of  English  civil- 
ization. I  do  not  say,  either,  that  we  may  not 
fairly  speak  of  a  Latin  race,  provided  we  bear  in 
mind  the  limitations  of  the  phrase ;  the  objection 
is  not  so  much  to  the  phrase  as  to  the  loose  way 


104          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

in  which  it  is  customarily  used  and  the  absurd  in- 
ferences which  are  often  grounded  on  it. 

The  ethnologist,  who  deals  with  skulls  and  stat- 
ures and  complexions,  may  venture  much  farther, 
sometimes,  than  the  linguist,  —  though  perhaps 
the  greater  length  of  his  excursions  may  not  al- 
ways compensate  for  their  comparative  insecurity. 
It  is  quite  open  to  the  ethnologist  to  hold  that 
the  successive  Aryan  swarms  which  colonized  Eu- 
rope were  like  each  other  in  physiological  char- 
acteristics, as  well  as  in  language  and  general 
culture.  Differences  of  complexion,  when  well 
marked,  are  among  the  most  conspicuous  differ- 
ences which  distinguish  individuals,  groups,  or 
races  from  one  another  ;  and  they  are,  moreover, 
apt  to  be  correlated  with  deep-seated  physiologi- 
cal differences  of  temperament.  In  all  countries 
peopled  by  Europeans  there  are  to  be  found  two 
contrasted  complexions,  the  blonde  and  brunette ; 
endlessly  complicated  and  varied  by  intermar- 
riage, but  nevertheless  in  their  extreme  examples 
so  strikingly  different  that  a  stranger  might  well 
be  excused  for  considering  them  as  marks  of  dif- 
ference in  race.  In  populations  that  have  long 
been  stationary  and  isolated  from  foreign  intru- 
sion we  do  not  find  such  differences  of  complexion. 
We  do  not  find  them  in  China  or  Japan,  or  among 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  105 

the  Samoyeds,  or  Kafirs,  or  Pacific  islanders,  or 
among  the  Arabs.  It  appears  to  be  only  among 
the  Indo-European  nations  that  they  occur  side 
by  side  in  the  same  community,  as  an  every-day 
matter.  Now  we  may  account  for  this  coexist- 
ence and  intermingling  of  contrasted  complexions 
by  supposing  that  the  various  peoples  of  Europe 
have  arisen  from  the  intermixing  in  various  pro- 
portions of  a  race  that  was  entirely  blonde  with  a 
race  that  was  entirely  brunette.  We  know  that 
the  Bask  or  Iberian  race,  which  once  seems  to 
have  possessed  a  great  part  of  Europe,  was,  and 
still  is,  uniformly  dark  complexioned.  We  may, 
accordingly,  suppose  that  the  Aryan-speaking  in- 
vaders were  uniformly  light.  The  effect  of  the 
earlier  invasions  of  Kelts,  Italians,  and  Greeks 
would  be  to  crowd  the  dark-skinned  Iberians  into 
the  three  southern  peninsulas,  into  western  Gaul, 
and  into  the  British  Isles.  The  next  step  would 
be  the  conquest  of  all  these  regions,  followed  by 
extensive  intermarriage  and  the  general  adoption 
of  Aryan  speech.  In  the  remotest  corner  of  all, 
cooped  up  between  the  Pyrenees  and  the  Bay  of 
Biscay,  —  here,  if  anywhere,  a  remnant  of  the 
aboriginal  population  might  preserve  its  purity 
of  race  and  its  primitive  speech.  As  a  result  of 
these  proceedings,  the  Aryan-speaking  peoples  of 


106          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Greece,  Italy,  Spain,  Gaul,  and  Britain  would 
show  a  mixture  of  light  and  dark  complexions, 
and  wherever  the  invaders  had  been  much  less 
numerous  than  the  aborigines  the  brunettes  would 
predominate.  But  now,  where  the  later  swarms 
of  Teutons  and  Slavs  came  pouring  in,  the  case 
would  have  been  somewhat  altered  for  them. 
Their  conquerings  and  interminglings  would  take 
place  not  with  a  pure-blooded  race  of  dark  abo- 
rigines, but  with  the  mixed  race  which  had  re- 
sulted from  the  foregoing  events.  One  conse- 
quence would  be  an  increased  percentage  of  fair 
complexions  in  western  countries  overrun  by  Teu- 
tons, especially  in  England,  northern  France,  and 
northern  Italy.  Another  consequence  would  be 
the  partial  darkening  of  Teutons  and  Slavs  by 
intermixture  with  Kelto-Iberian  predecessors  in 
southern  Germany  and  Austria.  Wherever,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  new-comers  were  left  pretty 
much  to  themselves,  as  in  northern  Germany, 
central  Russia,  and  Scandinavia,  we  should  find 
the  auburn  hair  and  blue  eyes  of  the  old  Aryan 
still  in  the  ascendant. 

This  very  ingenious  hypothesis,  which  is  de- 
fended by  such  a  cautious  ethnologist  as  Pro- 
fessor Huxley,1  accounts  remarkably  well  for  the 

1  On  Some  Fixed  Points  in  British  Ethnology,  Critiques  and  Ad- 
-<lresses,  London.  1873,  pp.  167-180. 


Our  Aryan  Forefathers.  107 

actual  distribution  of  light  and  dark  complexions  J 
throughout  Europe.  It  agrees  so  well  with  the 
facts  before  us  that  we  can  hardly  do  better  than 
adopt  it  as  a  provisional  explanation,  subject  to 
such  revision  and  amendment  as  may  turn  out  to 
be  necessary.  But  if  we  thus  admit  the  existence 
of  a  primitive  Aryan  race  that  was  physically  ho- 
mogeneous, it  must  be  remembered  that  we  admit 
it  on  very  different  grounds  from  those  on  which 
were  based  the  demonstration  of  a  primitive  ho- 
mogeneous Aryan  language.  The  original  com- 
munity of  language  is  a  point  on  which  we  have 
reached  absolute  certainty  ;  the  community  of 
race,  in  any  other  sense  than  that  of  long-contin- 
ued community  of  language  and  culture,  is  largely 
a  matter  of  speculation. 

Concerning  the  people  and  the  series  of  historic 
events  of  which  Aryana  Vaejo  was  the  legendary 
starting-point,  we  have  thus  obtained  much  inter- 
esting and  trustworthy  information  by  the  aid  of 
the  comparative  method  of  inquiry.  For  be  it 

1  We  may  go  still  farther  in  our  discrimination  between  the  abo- 
riginal Iberians  and  the  invading  Aryans.  It  is  probable  that,  along 
with  black  hair,  black  eyes,  and  brunette  skins,  the  Iberians  were 
distinguished  by  short  stature,  slight  and  compact  frames,  and  long 
heads ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  along  with  their  yellow  hair,  blue 
eyes,  and  blonde  skins,  the  Aryans  would  seem  to  have  been  distin- 
guished by  tall  stature,  massive  frames,  and  broad  heads.  See  the 
preceding  paper. 


Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

observed  that  the  results  so  far  set  down  have 
been  reached,  for  the  most  part,  by  a  mere  com- 
parative survey  of  the  various  regions  of  the  lin- 
guistic and  ethnical  field  with  which  we  have  been 
called  upon  to  deal.  We  have  in  this  way  ob- 
tained quite  an  accurate  conception  of  what  is 
meant  when  we  speak  of  the  Aryans.  But  as 
yet  we  have  dealt  only  with  the  veriest  rudiments 
of  the  subject.  Nor  have  we  as  yet  gone  far  to- 
ward illustrating  the  vast  and  rich  resources  of 
the  comparative  method.  To  be  able  to  depict 
the  prehistoric  culture  of  the  Aryan-speaking 
people,  to  interpret  their  mythical  conceptions, 
and  to  unfold  the  other  remarkable  truths  that 
lie  latent  in  the  variety  of  their  speech,  —  this  is 
indeed  a  fruitful  achievement.  But  to  show  how 
this  has  been  brought  about  requires  a  separate 
and  more  detailed  form  of  exposition. 

July,  1876. 


IV. 

WHAT  WE  LEARN  FROM  OLD  ARYAN  WORDS. 

THE  discovery  of  the  Aryan  family  of  lan- 
guages, as  elucidated  in  the  preceding  paper,  was 
the  first  and  most  conspicuous  consequence  of  the 
zeal  for  Sanskrit  studies  which  ensued  upon  the 
English  conquest  of  India.  Surely,  this  in  itself 
was  no  small  thing.  It  was  in  every  way  stimu- 
lating and  suggestive  to  have  detected  a  specific 
bond  of  relationship,  in  speech  and  in  culture,  be- 
tween such  different  peoples  as  the  English  and 
the  Hindus,  who  had  not  previously  been  sus- 
pected of  possessing  anything  in  common  save 
their  common  humanity.  It  had  indeed  been 
long  ago  maintained  that  languages  the  most 
diverse  in  superficial  aspect  were  descended  from 
a  common  source,  but  such  views  were  based 
merely  on  a  languid  assent  to  an  ill-understood 
tradition,  and  no  one  had  the  least  conception  of 
the  proper  method  of  tracing  linguistic  affinity. 
Down  to  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  the 
labours  of  etymologists  had  all  the  crudeness  of 


110  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

astrological  speculations,  or  of  barbarian  theories 
of  the  universe.  And  no  wonder,  since  attention 
had  been  chiefly  directed  toward  Hebrew,  a  lan- 
guage entirely  unrelated  to  those  of  Europe,  so 
that  any  attempt  to  explain  the  latter  by  a  ref- 
erence to  the  former  could  end  only  in  mental 
confusion.  It  was  a  very  striking  discovery  that 
was  made  when  it  was  proved  that  though  no 
likeness  whatever  exists  between  the  European 
tongues  and  Hebrew,  yet  the  closest  similarity  is 
manifest  between  these  tongues  and  a  much  more 
remote  Asiatic  language.  The  completion  of  this 
discovery  was  no  less  striking  when  it  was  shown 
that  while  linguistic  relationship  can  be  clearly 
traced,  according  to  fixed  rules  of  inference, 
among  all  the  various  members  of  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean group,  yet  the  moment  we  step  outside  of 
this  group  we  can  neither  detect  relationship  nor 
establish  rules  of  inference,  but  have  before  us  a 
new  set  of  facts,  quite  incongruous  with  the  old 
ones.  Such  a  contrast  was  just  what  was  needed 
in  order  to  indicate  what  the  true  signs  of  lin- 
guistic relationship  are,  and  thus  our  whole  men- 
tal horizon  was  shifted,  as  far  as  concerns  the 
study  of  language.  In  the  act  of  establishing  the 
existence  of  our  own  great  family  of  speech,  scien- 
tific methods  of  comparison  were  gradually  worked 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.    Ill 

out,  and  the  results  of  this  have  been  far-reaching 
enough. 

In  the  present  paper  I  propose  briefly  to  notice 
two  departments  of  study  which  have  been  actu- 
ally created  by  the  comparative  investigation  of 
Aryan  languages.  Under  the  first  head  I  shall 
call  attention  to  some  characteristics  of  scientific 
etymology  ;  under  the  second,  we  shall  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  prehistoric  culture  of  the  Aryans. 

First,  as  regards  etymology,  we  need  consider 
only  a  few  facts  which  show  how  systematic  and 
orderly  inference  has  been  substituted  for  what 
once  was  mere  random  guess-work.  In  compar- 
ing different  languages,  similarity  and  dissimilar- 
ity are  still,  as  formerly,  the  principal  tests  of  re- 
lationship ;  but  in  applying  these  tests  we  are 
strictly  limited  by  rules  which  formerly  were 
ignored.  Once  a  vague  resemblance  between  the 
vocabularies  of  two  languages  was  considered 
sufficient  ground  for  assigning  them  to  the  same 
class  ;  now  even  a  close  and  sustained  likeness  in 
vocabulary  is  not  enough,  unless  it  be  accom- 
panied by  likeness  in  grammatical  forms.  Thus, 
the  possession  of  innumerable  Latin  words,  such  as 
opinion,  reflect,  admire,  umbrella,  honour,  colour, 
contemplate,  criminal,  etc.,  does  not  make  Eng- 
lish a  language  of  the  Italic  class,  nor  does  it 


112  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

even  show  any  original  kinship  between  English 
and  Latin.  Such  words  have  simply  been  adopted 
from  Latin,  just  as  ennui  and  naivetS  have  been 
adopted  from  modern  French,  and  such  borrow- 
ing and  lending  as  this  can  go  on  between  any 
two  languages.  It  is  just  as  easy  for  us  to  use 
Arabic  words  like  alcohol  and  cipher  as  if  Arabic 
were  a  kindred  language.  Nearly  half  the  vo- 
cabulary of  modern  Persian  has  in  this  way  come 
to  be  made  up  of  Arabic  words,  yet  there  is  no 
kinship  whatever  between  Persian  and  Arabic. 
But  while  mere  vocabulary  does  not  determine 
the  place  of  a  language,  the  peculiar  style  of  mak- 
ing sentences  does  determine  it.  Though  more 
than  half  the  words  we  use  are  Latin,  English  is 
not  an  Italic  language,  because  we  cannot  make 
a  single  sentence  out  of  Latin  materials  alone. 
English,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  Teutonic  lan- 
guage, because  we  cannot  make  a  single  sentence 
without  introducing  some  Teutonic  shibboleth. 
Suppose  we  say,  "  Pantheism  desecrates  Deity  :  " 
here  we  seem  to  have  simply  one  Greek  word  fol- 
lowed by  two  Latin  words;  but  the  Teutonic 
shibboleth  comes  out  in  the  terminal  *  of  "  des- 
ecrates," which  is  the  peculiar  shape  in  which 
English  has  retained  the  old  Teutonic  verb-end- 
ing th,  as  it  would  appear  in  "  desecrateth."  . 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     113 

Again,  if  I  say,  "  I  can  go  to  Boston,"  my  phra- 
seology is  purely  Teutonic ;  but  if,  like  Dr.  John- 
son, I  have  a  weakness  for  big  words,  and  say, 
"  It  is  possible  for  this  individual  to  traverse  the 
vast  area  intervening  between  this  locality  and 
Boston,"  I  have  not  yet  escaped  the  boundary  of 
Teutonic  speech ;  for  although  I  have  introduced 
seven  Latin  words  of  secondary  importance,  yet 
the  little  words  which  enable  me  to  knit  the  sen- 
tence together  are  still  Teutonic,  as  before.  So 
when  we  say,  "  I  have,  thou  havest  or  hast,  he 
haveth,  hath,  or  has,"  the  Teutonic  shibboleth 
comes  out  in  this  style  of  inflection.  In  short,  it 
is  easy  enough  for  us  to  acquire  new  words,  but 
we  cannot  abandon  our  habits  of  sentence-making 
without  giving  up  our  language  altogether.  Now 
the  demonstrated  community  of  the  Aryan  lan- 
guages rests  not  merely  on  their  possession  of  a 
common  vocabulary,  but  on  their  retention,  in 
various  degrees,  of  grammatical  forms  originally 
common  to  all.  We  can  hardly  find  a  better  in- 
stance than  in  the  conjugation  of  the  verb  just 
alluded  to : 1  — 

"  TO   HAVE." 

Gothic,    haba,    habai-s,    habai-th ;     haba-m,     habai-th,     haba-nd. 
Pen.  -m,  -d;  -m,  -d,  -nd. 

Kelt.  -m,  -d;  -m,  -d,  -t. 

1  Whitney,  Study  of  Lanyuaye,  p.  J99. 
8 


114  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Lith.  -mi,         -si,  -ti;  -me,            -te,  -ti. 

Slav.  -mi,         -si,  -ti;  -mu,            -te,  -nti. 

Lat.  habeoi      habe-s,  habe-t;  habe-mus,    habe-tis,  habe-nt. 

Gr.  -mi,          -si,  -ti;  -mes,          -te,  nti. 

Sir.  -mi,         -si,  -ti;  -masi,         -tha,  -uti. 

Community  of  vocabulary  is,  however,  a  very 
important  matter,  when  rightly  considered.  It  is 
true  that  any  language  may  borrow  a  large  pro- 
portion of  its  words  from  an  entirely  alien  source, 
as  Persian  has  borrowed  from  Arabic.  But  in 
comparing  the  various  forms  of  Aryan  speech  we 
have  found  a  criterion  which  enables  us  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  words  that  are  alike  in  two 
languages  because  one  has  borrowed  them  from 
the  other,  and  words  that  are  alike  because  they 
are  simply  modified  forms  of  the  same  aboriginal 
word.  This  supremely  important  point  can  be 
here  treated  but  roughly ;  yet  I  hope  that,  with  a 
few  illustrations,  it  may  be  rendered  intelligible. 

One  of  the  chief  reasons  for  the  divergence  of 
a  language,  originally  uniform,  into  two  or  more 
distinct  dialects  is  to  be  found  in  those  differences 
of  pronunciation  which  arise,  one  hardly  knows 
how,  in  different  localities.  The  most  curious 
feature  of  these  differences  is  that  they  are  often 
so  extremely  systematic.  Every  one  has  heard  of 
the  Englishman  who  inquired,  "  If  a  haitch  and  a 
ho  and  a  har  and  a  hess  and  a  he  don't  spell  ' 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.    115 

what  in  thunder  does  it  spell,  you  know?"  The 
infallible  accuracy  with  which  the  cockney  omits 
his  h  where  it  belongs,  and  supplies  it  where  it 
does  not  belong,  has  always  excited  my  wonder- 
ing admiration.  Were  there  any  caprice  in  the 
usage,  it  would  seem  less  marvellous.  But  so  un- 
erring is  the  instinct  that  when  a  friend  of  mine 
once  purposely  spelled  his  name  out  as  U-t-t-o-n 
he  was  correctly  announced  by  the  waiter  as  Mr. 
HUTTON!  Is  not  this  what  our  High  German 
friends,  with  equal  felicity,  and  in  illustration  of 
a  similar  point,  would  call  a  very  eggsdraorti- 
nary  zirgumsdance  ?  Yet  after  all,  so  far  from  be- 
ing extraordinary,  such  phenomena  occur  so  regu- 
larly in  a  comparison  of  the  Aryan  languages  that 
they  have  been  reduced  to  a  systematic  form  of 
expression  in  what  is  known  as  "Grimm's  law." 
Take,  for  example,  the  word  "  father."  This  is 
the  same  in  all  the  Aryan  languages,  save  for 
the  differences  in  pronunciation  which  make  the 
German  say  voter,  while  in  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Sanskrit  we  have  pater.  On  the  other  hand, 
brother,  in  German  bruder,  appears  in  Latin  and 
Sanskrit  as  frater  or  bhratar,  in  Greek  as  ^pdrrjp, 
the  member  of  a  brotherhood  or  fraternity.  That 
is,  where  we  pronounce  an/  the  Greeks,  Romans, 
and  Hindus  pronounced  a  p,  but  where  we  pro- 


116          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

nounce  a  b  they  pronounce  an  /,  or  something  like 
it.  Similarly,  where  we  say  gard-en  the  Greek 
said  x°PTO*  an^  the  Latin  hortrus  ;  and  our  goose, 
which  appears  more  fully  in  the  German  gam,  is 
found  in  Greek  as  x^"»  in  Sanskrit  as  hansa,  in 
Bohemian  as  hus,  the  name  of  the  celebrated 
martyr.  But  conversely,  where  we  say  heart  the 
Greek  said  KapS  and  the  old  Roman  cord,  and 
where  the  German  says  haupt  the  Roman  said 
caput.  That  is,  a  Teutonic  g  answers  to  a  Greek, 
Latin,  Sanskrit,  or  Slavonic  A,  but  a  Teutonic  h 
answers  to  a  k  in  the  latter  languages.  Now  this 
group  of  facts  is  not  precisely  analogous  to  the 
cockney's  transposition  of  his  aspirates,  but  it  is 
certainly  very  similar,  and  it  is  equally  myste- 
rious. Why  this  curious  alteration  of  sounds 
should  have  occurred  so  systematically,  and  on  so 
great  a  scale,  no  one  has  ever  succeeded  in  ex- 
plaining. It  is  none  the  less  to  the  purpose,  how- 
ever, that  it  has  occurred.  Although  an  empirical 
rule,  Grimm's  law  is  nevertheless  a  well-estab- 
lished rule,  and  in  the  study  of  Aryan  etymology 
it  has  to  be  taken  into  account  at  every  step.  It 
is  easy  to  see  what  a  revolution  the  establishment 
of  this  law  has  worked  in  our  methods  of  com- 
paring words.  Formerly  the  etymologist  looked, 
though  in  a  vague,  indiscriminate  way,  for  mere 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     Ill 

resemblances ;  and  this  was  natural  enough.  But 
now  a  too  strict  resemblance  sometimes  becomes 
a  suspicious  circumstance.  The  Greek  word  for 
"  whole  "  is  o/Xos,  and  what  could  be  more  plausi- 
ble than  to  suppose  it  identical  with  the  English 
word?  But  here  Grimm's  law  makes  us  sus- 
picious. We  ought  not  to  expect  a  Greek  to  pro- 
nounce "  whole "  like  an  Englishman,  any  more 
than  we  ought  to  expect  to  hear  a  cockney  say 
"  horse."  What  the  cockney  says  is  "  orse," 
and  what  the  Greek  would  naturally  say  is  not 
oAos,  but  KoAos ;  and  in  point  of  fact  it  has  been 
otherwise  proved  that  our  suspicion  is  here  well 
grounded,  — the  resemblance  between  the  English 
and  Greek  words  is  purely  accidental.  Mere  re- 
semblance is  thus  a  very  treacherous  guide  in  ety- 
mology. In  French  we  have  louer,  "  to  hire,"  and 
louer,  "to  praise."  Some  philological  dreamer 
tried  to  show  that  these  words  might  be  con- 
nected, because  you  praise  your  lodgings  or  horses 
when  you  wish  to  induce  some  one  to  hire  them  ! 
In  fact,  the  one  word  has  been  clipped  down  from 
Latin  locare,  u  to  hire,"  and  the  other  from  Latin 
laudare,  "  to  praise."  In  striking  contrast  to  this, 
let  us  observe  how  two  English  words,  pen  and 
feather,  are  closely  connected  in  origin,  in  spite 
of  their  entire  dissimilarity.  There  was  an  Old 


118  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Aryan  verb  pat,  "to  fly,"  which  still  appears  in  the 
Greek  7reVo/x<u.  There  were  also  such  suffixes  as 
tra  and  na,  denoting  the  instrument  with  which 
an  act  is  accomplished.  Pat-tra  thus  meant  "  a 
wing,"  and  a  Hindu  might  perhaps  thus  under- 
stand it ;  but  in  Gothic  we  find  fath-thra,  and  in 
English  feather,  just  as  Grimm's  law  has  taught 
us  to  expect.  Pat-na  had  the  same  meaning,  and 
passed  into  old  Latin  as  pes-na,  which  later  Latin 
clipped  down  to  penna,  a  wing  or  feather,  and 
finally  the  quill-feather  with  which  you  write.  In 
these  days  we  have  applied  the  word  to  little  im- 
plements of  gold  or  steel  which  have  nothing  to 
do  with  flying,  unless  the  soaring  of  Pegasus  be 
supposed  to  keep  up  the  association  of  ideas. 

This  example  of  pen  and  feather  is  a  very  trite 
one,  but  I  have  cited  it  because  it  further  illus- 
trates a  very  important  point,  toward  which  the 
argument  has  been  for  some  time  tending.  Look- 
ing at  these  two  words,  with  reference  to  the 
whole  extant  Aryan  vocabulary,  we  find  that 
their  very  forms  disclose  their  past  history.  We 
see  that  the  word  feather,  which  has  undergone 
the  change  of  pronunciation  indicated  in  Grimm's 
law,  in  common  with  Teutonic  words  in  general, 
is  a  genuine  Teutonic  word,  and  appears  in  the 
English  language  to-day  because  it  has  always  be 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     119 

longed  to  English  speech.  But  the  word  pen, 
which  has  not  undergone  this  change,  shows  thus 
on  its  very  face  that  it  has  not  grown  up  in  com- 
pany with  Teutonic  words,  but  has  been  adopted 
at  a  recent  date  from  another  branch  of  the  Aryan 
family.  The  changes  formulated  in  Grimm's  law 
took  place  in  early  times,  long  before  people  had 
begun  to  think  critically  about  their  pronuncia- 
tion or  their  diction.  When  we  adopt  Latin  words 
in  modern  times,  we  do  not  refashion  them  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  twisted  pronunciation  of  our 
barbaric  ancestors,  but  we  take  them  as  they  are. 
From  pater  we  take  paternal,  without  trying  to 
make  it  sound  like  its  equivalent,  fatherly.  Thus 
we  arrive  at  a  safe  criterion  for  distinguishing  be- 
tween words  which  have  been  passed  about  from 
one  Aryan  language  to  another,  in  the  course  of 
recent  intercommunication  of  culture,  and  words 
wh'  ;h  have  descended,  with  divers  modifications, 
from  a  common  original.  Words  of  the  latter 
sort,  where  they  exist  in  different  classes  of  Aryan 
speech,  have  obviously  been  handed  down  from 
primeval  times ;  they  must  have  formed  part  of 
the  vocabulary  employed  in  Aryaua  Vaejo,  and 
the  most  convincing  proof  of  their  genuineness  is 
to  be  found  in  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  wear  and 
tear  they  have  undergone.  To  recur  to  an  ex- 


1 20  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ample  previously  cited,  the  existence  of  such  Eng- 
lish words  as  colour,  opinion,  admire,  etc.,  not  only 
fails  to  prove  kinship  between  English  and  Latin, 
but  it  does  not  even  prove  that  English  is  an 
Aryan  language,  since  these  words  are  manifest 
importations,  and  the  case  of  Persian  and  Arabic 
shows  that  nothing  is  easier  than  for  one  lan- 
guage to  adopt  half  its  current  words  from  an- 
other that  has  no  relationship  with  it.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  when  we  compare  such  words  as 
corn  with  Lat.  granum  ;  horn  with  Lat.  cornu; 
who  and  what  with  Lat.  quis  and  quid,  Skr.  kas 
and  kad ;  queen  with  Gr.  yuny ;  beech  with  Lat. 
fagus;  doom  with  Gr.  fleets ;  tear  with  Skr.  dar ; 
bear  with  Skr.  lhar,  Gr.  and  Lat.  fero ;  tooth 
(Goth,  tunthus)  with  Zend  and  Skr.  dant,  Lat. 
dens,  —  when  we  find  a  thousand  such  cases  of 
systematic  divergence,  we  get  clear  proof  of  the 
original  identity  of  the  English  vocabulary  with 
the  others  brought  into  the  comparison.  For  the 
divergences  in  themselves  are  incompatible  with 
any  theory  of  modern  borrowing  and  lending, 
while  the  extreme  regularity  of  their  recurrence  is 
explicable  only  as  the  result  of  common  processes 
operating  on  common  materials. 

The  symmetry  of  consonant-changes  throughout 
the  Aryan  languages  is  at  first  sight  a  wonderful 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     121 

phenomenon,  and  the  tracing  of  correlated  words 
in  accordance  with  such  laws  as  Grimm's  never 
ceases  to  be  a  fascinating  study.  The  laws  of 
vowel-change  —  whereby,  for  example,  the  Skr. 
matar  corresponds  to  Lat.  mater,  Gr.  MTTJP,  Gaelic 
mathair,  Germ,  mutter,  and  Eng.  mother  —  are 
hardly  less  interesting.  But  to  do  justice  to  such 
a  subject  as  etymology  would  require  much  more 
time  than  we  have  at  our  disposal.  In  the  pres- 
ent paper  I  have  not  attempted  to  make  anything 
like  a  full  statement  even  of  Grimm's  law,  but 
have  given  only  such  scanty  illustrations  as  may 
serve  to  render  the  outline  of  the  argument  in- 
telligible while  I  go  on  to  point  out  one  of  the 
largest  of  the  results  that  have  come  from  this 
minute  study  of  consonants  and  vowels.  From 
this  minute  study  the  laws  of  the  permutation  of 
words  have  been  wrought  into  such  a  complete 
and  harmonious  system  that  it  has  become  pos- 
sible to  reconstruct  large  portions  of  the  common 
Aryan  mother-tongue  by  comparing  together  the 
curiously  modified  forms  of  its  modern  descend- 
ants. The  problem  is  quite  similar  to  what  it 
would  be  if  classical  Latin  were  extinct,  and  we 
were  required  to  reproduce  as  much  as  possible  of 
it  from  an  elaborate  comparison  of  the  vocabula- 
ries and  grammatical  forms  of  French,  Spanish, 


122          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Italian,  and  their  allied  modern  dialects.  Such  a 
task  would  no  doubt  be  delicate  and  difficult ;  but 
there  is  also  no  doubt  that  a  great  deal  of  good 
Latin  could  be  reconstructed  in  this  way.  The 
restoration  of  the  Aryan  mother-tongue  seems  at 
first  sight  a  still  more  formidable  task  ;  but  it  is 
a  task  for  which  we  have  also  more  abundant 
materials  in  the  wider  variation  among  Aryan 
words  as  compared  with  Romanic  words.  Thus 
by  a  comparison  of  French  mois  with  Span,  mes 
and  Ital.  mese,  knowing  besides  the  general  hab- 
its of  the  Romanic  languages,  we  might  proba- 
bly infer  the  Lat.  mensis  as  the  common  original 
of  the  three;  but  on  looking  over  the  whole 
Aryan  field,  and  comparing  Lat.  mensis  with 
English  month,  Gr.  fify,  Lith.-  menesis,  O.  H.  G. 
manot,  and  Skr.  masa,  we  arrive  with  even 
stronger  probability  at  the  Old  Aryan  mansa  as 
the  only  form  which  could  have  given  rise  to  all 
these. 

During  the  last  twenty  years  it  may  almost  be 
said  that  the  great  work  of  Aryan  philology  has 
been  the  reconstruction  of  the  Old  Aryan  mother- 
tongue.  At  least  the  comparative  researches  that 
have  been  made  have  owed  their  chief  interest  to 
their  bearing  on  this  problem.  In  philology,  as 
in  zoology  and  botany,  questions  of  classification 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     123 

have  become  irretrievably  implicated  with  ques- 
tions of  genealogical  kinship.  Whether  we  are 
considering  consonants  and  vowels,  or  the  case- 
endings  of  nouns,  or  the  syntax  of  moods  and 
tenses,  it  is  impossible  to  describe  accurately  the 
relations  of  the  several  Aryan  languages  to  one 
another  without  involving  a  perpetual  reference 
to  the  common  original  from  which  these  lan- 
guages sprang.  The  first  noteworthy  attempts 
at  reconstructing  the  mother-tongue  were  made 
by  the  great  philologist  August  Schleicher,  who 
by  way  of  giving  a  popular  illustration  of  his 
abstruse  results,  once  wrote  a  little  fable  in  Old 
Aryan.  This  jeu  d"1  esprit  of  Schleicher's  has  been 
so  often  alluded  to  that  I  am  tempted  to  quote  it 
here,  with  an  English  translation.  To  any  clas- 
sical scholar,  who  has  also  a  slight  acquaintance 
with  Sanskrit  and  Gothic,  the  sense  must  shine 
so  clearly  through  the  Old  Aryan  words  that  the 
translation  will  hardly  be  needed. 

Avis  akvasas  ka. 

Avis,  yasmin  varna  na  a  ast,  dadarka  akvams, 
tarn,  vagham  garum  vaghantam,  tarn,  bharam 
magham,  tarn,  manum  aku  bharantam.  Avis 
akvabhyams  a  vavakat:  kard  aghnutai  mai  vi- 
danti  manum  akvams  agantam. 


124          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Akvasas  a  vavakant  :  krudhi  aval,  kard 
agbnutai  vividvant- svas :  manus  patis  varnam 
avisams  karnauti  svabhyam  gharmam  vastram 
avibhyams  ka  varna  na  asti. 

Tat  kukruvants  avis  agrara  a  bhugat.1 

The  Sheep  and  the  Horses. 

A  sheep,  whose  wool  had  been  shorn,  looked 
upon  the  horses  as  they  drew  a  heavy  wagon, 
bore  a  great  load,  or  swiftly  carried  a  man. 
The  sheep  said  to  the  horses,  "  It  grieves  my 
heart  to  see  Man  driving  horses." 

The  horses  said,  "  Listen,  sheep ;  it  grieves  our 
hearts  to  think  how  the  despot  Man  makes  his 
warm  garment  of  sheep's  wool,  while  the  sheep 
goes  woolless." 

On  hearing  this,  the  sheep  quit  the  field. 

In  the  simple  diction  of  this  little  apologue, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  we  have  a  very  close 
approach  to  the  words  that  our  Aryan  forefathers 
would  have  understood  in  the  days  before  they 
had  as  yet  invaded  Europe  and  mixed  with  the 
swart  Iberian,  whom  —  physically  though  not 
linguistically  —  we  also  reckon  as  our  ancestor. 

1  Kul in  and  Schleicher,  Beitrdge  zur  vergleichenden  Sjjrachfw- 
schung,  \.  207. 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     125 

But  with  respect  to  such  attempts  at  reproduc- 
ing the  Aryan  mother-tongue  in  its  concrete  real- 
ity, there  is  one  thing  which  we  must  always  bear 
in  mind.  Granting  that  a  word  A  and  a  word  B 
both  existed  in  Old  Aryan,  in  the  time  of  the 
Spracheinheit,  we  do  not  know  but  A  may  have 
become  obsolete  before  B  came  into  general  use. 
So  that,  if  we  were  to  try  to  write  out  a  long 
story  after  Schleicher's  example,  though  each  in- 
dividual word  might  be  correctly  reproduced,  we 
should  run  great  risk  of  writing  an  Old  Aryan 
style  as  anomalous  as  would  be  the  style  of  a 
writer  of  hypothetical  English  who  should  mix 
up  in  one  and  the  same  sentence  the  diction  of 
Chaucer,  of  Dry  den,  and  of  Longfellow.  It  is 
difficult,  at  present,  to  see  how  chronological  con- 
siderations can  be  applied  to  the  vocabulary  of 
Old  Aryan,  in  the  absence  of  that  kind  of  historic 
evidence  which  written  records  or  inscriptions 
alone  can  furnish.  In  the  last  resort,  compara- 
tive philology  is  an  historical  science.  Though  it 
can,  within  a  limited  range,  perform  wonderful 
feats  of  inference,  quite  comparable  with  such  as 
are  achieved  by  the  physical  sciences,  yet  after 
all,  the  tether  by  which  it  may  stray  from  its  his- . 
torio  base  is  not  a  long  one.  The  science  of  Ian 
guage  must  always  be  studied  mainly  by  the  help 
of  documentary  evidence. 


126  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Yet  while  this  chronological  difficulty  would 
seem  to  render  hopeless  the  accurate  restitution 
of  the  Aryan  mother-tongue  as  a  whole,  we  can 
none  the  less  restore  or  reconstruct  individual  Old 
Aryan  words  with  a  fair  approach  to  accuracy. 
And  a  very  extensive  Old  Aryan  vocabulary  has 
already  been  thus  obtained,  as  we  may  see  in  the 
three  goodly  octavos  of  Fick's  great  dictionary, 
in  which  a  primitive  Aryan  warrior  —  if  we  could 
first  resuscitate  him  and  then  teach  him  to  read 
—  would  no  doubt  find  himself  more  or  less  at 
home.1 

In  no  respect  do  these  philological  inquiries 
appear  more  interesting  than  in  the  light  which 
they  throw  upon  the  prehistoric  civilization  of 
our  Aryan-speaking  forefathers.  No  historic  rec- 
ord, not  even  a  vague  tradition,  is  preserved  of 
the  time  when  the  blue-eyed  ancestors  of  Kelt, 
Greek,  Roman,  and  Teuton  dwelt  in  a  single 
community  with  the  ancestors  of  Persian  and 
Hindu.  We  have  no  clue  even  to  the  date  of  this 
epoch  of  common  Aryanism,  though  we  may  very 
fairly  allow  for  it  perhaps  three  or  four  thousand 
years  before  the  Christian  era.  Even  the  oldest 
Aryan  legends,  as  those  of  the  Vendidad,  pre- 

1  Pick,  Vergleichendes   WSrterbuch  der  Indogermanischen  Spro- 
cket*.   3d  edition,  Goettingen,  1874-76.    3  vols.  8vo. 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     127 

serve  only  a  dim  reference  to  a  time  when  the 
Indo-Persian  branch  of  the  family  had  not  yet 
become  divided.  Yet  concerning  the  degree  of 
culture  readied  in  those  remote  times,  so  far 
antedating  all  conscious  historic  tradition,  the  un- 
conscious record  of  language  has  given  us  some 
trustworthy  information.  From  the  seemingly 
dry  study  of  consonants  and  vowels  an  easy  pro- 
cess of  inference  opens  up  to  us,  as  with  a  magi- 
cian's wand,  a  fascinating  picture  of  the  life  and 
pursuits  and  habits  of  thought  of  the  people  from 
whose  long-perished  form  of  speech  our  vowels 
and  consonants  are  derived. 

» 

Wonderful  as  this  may  seem,  what  is  simpler, 
when  we  have  once  ascertained  that  a  certain 
word  belonged  to  the  Old  Aryan  language,  than 
the  inference  that  the  word  was  used  to  describe 
some  object  or  express  some  thought?  And 
where  the  meaning  of  the  word  has  remained 
uniform  throughout  all  the  vicissitudes  of  pro- 
nunciation and  inflection  to  which  it  has  been 
subjected,  what  better  guarantee  do  we  need  that 
the  word  was  used  with  the  same  meaning  in  the 
mother-tongue  ?  It  requires  no  extraordinary  in- 
sight, when  one  has  mastered  the  rules  of  com- 
parative grammar,  to  see  that  the  primitive  Aryan 
called  his  nearest  relatives  by  the  names  patar, 


128  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

matar,  bhratar,  svasar,  mnu,  and  dhugatar ;  or 
that  when  he  learned  to  count  up  to  ten  he  said 
something  like  aina,  dva,  tri,  katvar,  pankan, 
ksvaks,  saptan,  aktan,  navan,  dakan. 

Proceeding  in  this  way,  we  find  abundant  evi- 
dence that  the  early  Aryans  had  outgrown  the 
nomad  stage  of  civilization  and  acquired  settled 
habitations,  not  merely  in  villages,  but  even  in 
fortified  towns.  The  Lat.  domus  reappears,  with 
hardly  any  change,  in  Gr.  8o/*os,  Skr.  dama,  Ar- 
men.  dohm,  Irish  daimh,  and  Russ.  domu,  always 
with  the  meaning  of  "house."  In  the  Teutonic 
class  we  do  not  find  this  word  in  precisely  the 
same  sense  ;  but  we  have  the  Germ,  zimmer,  "  a 
room,"  connected  with  Goth,  timrjan,  "  to  build," 
and  Eng.  timber,  or  "  building  material  ;  "  and 
these  words,  compared  with  Gr.  8e/m»-,  carry  us 
back  to  Old  Aryan  dam,  "  to  build,"  so  that  the 
domus  of  our  forefathers  was  not  a  mere  hole  in 
the  rocks,  but  a  dwelling-place  put  together  by 
the  art  of  the  carpenter.  In  Greek  the  more 
common  word  for  house  is  O?KOS,  originally  Fotxos, 
"  a  place  that  one  goes  into."  This  word  runs 
through  all  the  Aryan  languages,  but  the  original 
sense  of  "  entering "  is  forgotten,  and  it  only 
means  "  a  place  where  one  lives,"  —  sometimes  a 
house,  but  more  generally  a  village.  Thus  we 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     129 

have  Skr.  veca,  Zend  vie,  Russ.  vesi  and  Polish 
wies,  Lat.  vicus  (whence  the  diminutive  vicula, 
villa,  village),  Irish  fich,  Kymric  ffwic,  Goth,  weihs, 
Eng.  wick.  The  Old  Norse  language  shows  a 
curious  deviation  from  this  general  agreement  in 
meaning;  for  whereas  the  word  generally  de- 
scribes an  abode  on  the  land,  to  the  sea-roving 
Norseman  a  wick  was  a  creek  or  sheltered  bay 
serving  as  a  station  for  ships,  and  hence  their  fa- 
mous name  of  Vikings  or  "  men  of  the  fjord."  So, 
while  the  ending  wick  or  wich  is  very  common 
in  old  English  names  of  inland  towns,  it  occurs 
frequently  also  on  the  British  coasts  in  the  Norse 
sense,  as  in  Sandwich  and  Berwick,  favourite  sta- 
tions for  pirates.  But  with  this  characteristic 
divergence,  the  generally  uniform  significance  of 
the  word,  in  languages  so  widely  scattered,  points 
clearly  to  the  existence  of  village  communities 
among  the  prehistoric  Aryans.  The  various  forms 
of  the  English  word  town  are  equally  instructive, 
though  not  quite  so  numerous.  The  Old  English 
form  tun  has  its  counterpart  in  Old  German  zun, 
wan  inclosed  or  fortified  place,"  with  which  the 
modern  German  zaun,  "  a  hedge,"  is  connected. 
Now,  in  accordance  witli  Grimm's  law,  we  find 
Armenian  dun,  "  a  house,"  Kymric  din,  "  a  for- 
tress," Irish  dun,  a  "  fortress  "  or  "  camp "  or 
9 


130  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

"  walled  town."  This  Keltic  form  appears  in 
many  geographical  names,  such  as  Thun,  in 
Switzerland ;  Lug-dun-um  on  the  Rhone,  now 
Lyons;  Lug-dun-um  in  Holland,  now  Ley  den ; 
Dun-keld,  the  "  fort  of  the  Kelts ;  "  Dum-barton, 
the  "  fort  of  the  Britons ;  "  Dundee,  London,  Clar- 
endon, etc.  In  the  remote  Himalayas  the  same 
word  reoccurs  in  the  names  of  hill  fortresses,  such 
as  Kjarda  Dhun,  Dehra  Dhun,  etc. ;  and  again 
it  is  a  fair  inference  that  where  a  word  turns  up 
in  so  many  parts  of  the  Aryan  domain  with  the 
very  same  determinations  of  meaning,  it  must 
have  belonged  to  the  primitive  vocabulary  of  the 
race.  So  that  our  forefathers  would  appear  to 
have  been  acquainted  not  only  with  houses  and 
villages,  but  also  with  some  kind  of  walled  towns. 
The  name  of  the  rampart  with  which  such  forti- 
fied inclosures  were  surrounded  was  also  contained 
in  the  Old  Aryan  vocabulary.  From  the  old  root 
val  or  var,  to  "  protect  "  or  "  surround,"  we  have 
Skr.  varana,  Old  Germ,  ivari,  Pol.  warownia,  Lat. 
vallum,  Lith.  wolas,  Irish  fal,  Kymric  gwal,  Eng. 
wall.  The  partition  wall  of  a  house,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  more  properly  described  by  a  root  which 
in  Sanskrit  seems  to  be  applied  to  wicker-work, 
but  which  in  the  European  tongues  appears,  with 
hardly  any  variation  either  in  sound  or  sense. 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     131 

as  Lat.  murus,  Lith.  muras,  Old  Germ,  mura, 
modern  Germ,  mauer,  Irish,  Kymric,  Old  Eng., 
and  Pol.  mur.  The  name  for  "  roof  "  is  similarly 
ubiquitous :  in  Skr.  we  have  sthag,  "  to  cover,"  in 
Lith.  stogasi"  a  roof,"  in  Gr.  ort'yos,  a  "  roof  "  or 
"  house,"  and  oreyo>,  "  to  cover ; "  but  the  word 
appears  about  as  often  in  Greek  as  reyos,  with  the 
initial  letter  dropped  ;  and  so  in  Irish  we  find  tegt 
"  a  house,"  in  Lat.  tego  and  tectum,  in  Old  Eng. 
thecan,  in  Eng.  deck  and  thatch.  In  door  there 
has  been  even  less  variation  than  this:  Skr.  has 
dvar,  and  also  dur  in  the  Vedas ;  Zend  dvara, 
Pers.  dar,  Gr.  Ovpa,  O.  H.  G.  tura,  Goth,  daur, 
Old  Eng  duru,  Irish  and  Welsh  dor ;  the  Lithu- 
anian has  lost  the  singular,  but  retains  the  plu- 
ral durrys  for  folding-doors.  The  word  meant 
originally  "that  which  obstructs  or  keeps  out." 
Another  old  name  for  the  door,  which  appears  in 
Skr.  as  arara,  has  been  preserved  in  Europe  only 
in  the  Irish  orair,  a  "  porch  "  or  "  vestibule,"  and 
Welsh  oriel.  This  latter  is  one  of  the  very  few 
Keltic  words  to  be  found  in  English,  where  it  has 
become  the  name  of  a  kind  of  bay-window. 

Among  the  Aryan  words  for  "  window  "  there 
is  no  such  identity,  though  there  is  a  most  cu- 
rious similarity  in  the  metaphors  by  which  they 
have  been  constructed.  In  Sanskrit  the  window 


132          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

is  grhaksha,  or  "  the  eye  of  the  house,"  and  a  big 
round  window  is  called  gavakxha,  a  compound  of 
gau,  "  cow,"  and  aksha,  "  eye,"  which  is  about 
equivalent  to  our  expression  "  bull's-eye."  The 
Slavonic  languages  have  okno,  from  oko,  "  an  eye," 
while  Gothic  has  augadauro  and  O.  H.  G.  auga- 
tora,  or  "  eye-door."  The  meaning  of  our  English 
word  is  not  so  immediately  apparent,  but  in  one  of 
our  nearest  relatives,  the  Danish,  it  occurs  as  vin- 
due,  and  in  Old  Norse  this  was  vindauga,  that  is, 
"  an  eye  or  hole  for  the  wind  to  blow  through." 
These  coincidences  are  interesting  as  showing  how 
easily  and  naturally  the  same  association  of  ideas 
may  occur  to  different  people,  for  these  words  have 
been  independently  formed.  Whether  we  are  en- 
titled to  infer  from  this  that  the  Aryan  mother- 
tongue  had  no  word  for  window,  and  that  there- 
fore the  people  who  spoke  it  lighted  and  aired 
their  houses  only  through  the  door-way,  it  is  not 
easy  to  decide.  It  is  very  unsafe  to  rest  a  con- 
clusion upon  negative  evidence.  The  Old  Aryans 
certainly  might  have  had  a  name  for  window 
which  among  various  tribes  came  to  be  supplanted 
by  various  other  expressions.  Accordingly  we  can 
only  say  that,  while  we  are  perfectly  sure  that 
they  had  doors,  it  is  quite  uncertain,  so  far  as  phi. 
lology  goes,  whether  they  had  windows  or  not 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     133 

And  in  general,  while  the  occurrence  of  the  same 
indigenous  name  for  any  object,  throughout  the 
different  classes  of  Indo-European  speech,  is  suffi- 
cient proof  that  the  primitive  Aryans  knew  and 
named  the  object,  on  the  other  hand,  the  non- 
existence  of  such  a  common  name  raises  only  a 
negative  presumption,  which  we  have  seldom  any 
further  means  for  testing. 

The  ancient  Aryan  gained  a  livelihood  chiefly 
from  rearing  cattle  and  tilling  the  ground.  The 
names  of  our  principal  domestic  animals  are  found 
in  all  parts  of  the  Indo-European  territory.  The 
various  Teutonic  terms,  cow,  ku,  chuo,  reappear 
with  the  proper  change  of  guttural  in  Lettish  gdws, 
Pers.  gdw,  Armen.  gov,  Zend  gao  and  gava,  Skr. 
gam,  gava,  and  gu.  A  peculiar  twist,  by  which 
a  labial  was  pronounced,  instead  of  an  original 
guttural,  may  be  observed  quite  frequently  in  the 
Graeco- Roman  and  Keltic  languages,  and  here  we 
have  Gr.  /Sou?,  Lat.  bos,  Irish  bo,  and  Welsh  bu. 
The  meaning  of  the  word  has  been  variously  ex- 
plained, but,  as  we  have  beside  it  the  Skr.  gu, 
Gr.  yoaw  and  /3oaw,  Lat.  boao,  to  "  bellow,"  it  is 
most  likely  an  imitative  sound,  like  our  moo  and 
mooley.  In  the  dialect  of  the  Vedas  a  bull  is 
called  vdksha,  in  later  Skr.  and  Zend  uksha  ;  in 
Gothic  this  appears  as  auhsa,  and  in  Old  Eng. 


134  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

as  oxa,  whence  our  ox.  Sthira,  again,  is  a  Skr. 
name  for  bull,  meaning  the  "  powerful "  animal. 
In  Zend  gtaora  means  a  strong  beast  of  burden  ;  in 
English  we  have  kept  the  full  word  steer,  but  the 
initial  s  has  generally  been  dropped,  so  that  we 
have  Dan.  tyr,  Gr.  and  Lat.  taurus,  Russ.  turu, 
Irish  tor.  The  word  bull  itself  is  descriptive  of 
the  strength  of  the  animal,  and  appears  in  Skr. 
balin,  Irish  bulan,  Lith.  bullus,  and  in  many  other 
languages.  There  are  a  great  many  other  Aryan 
names  for  these  animals,  but  without  spending 
time  on  them  we  may  note  that  several  of  the 
words  just  cited  have  been  borrowed  by  non- 
Aryan  languages,  such  as  those  of  the  Finno-Ta- 
taric  class,  and  even  the  Japanese  and  Chinese ; 
from  which  it  would  seem  probable  either  that 
the  primitive  Aryans  were  the  first  to  domesticate 
cattle,  or  at  least  that  they  were  very  preeminent 
as  a  pastoral  race,  and  furnished  to  their  neigh- 
bours great  numbers  of  these  most  useful  animals. 
The  prominence  of  the  cow  in  early  Aryan 
thought  is  shown  both  by  the  multitude  of  syn- 
onyms for  the  creature,  and  by  the  frequency  of 
similes,  metaphors,  and  myths  in  the  Vedic  hymns 
in  which  the  cow  plays  a  part.  In  those  days, 
moreover,  which  were  before  the  days  of  "  soft " 
or  "  hard  "  money,  wealth  was  reckoned  in  cows, 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.    135 

and  cows  were  the  circulating  medium,  with  sheep 
and  pigs  for  small  change.  Every  one  knows  that 
Lat.  pecunia  is  derived  from  pecus,  "  a  herd ;  " 
the  same  is  true  of  peculium,  "a  man's  private 
property,"  from  which  we  have  obtained  peculiar- 
ity, or  "  that  which  especially  pertains  to  an  indi- 
vidual." Pecus,  Lith.  pekus,  Skr.  and  Zend  pacu, 
"  the  animal  that  is  tied  or  penned  up,"  reappears 
with  the  regular  change  in  Goth,  faihu,  Old  Eng. 
feoh,  modern  Germ.  Vieh ;  in  modern  English 
the  word  has  become  fee,  a  "  pecuniary  reward." 
In  Irish  we  have  bosluaiged,  "  riches,"  from  bos- 
luag,  "  a  herd  of  cows."  When  you  go  to  a  tav- 
ern to  dine  you  pay  your  shot  or  scot  before  leav- 
ing ;  or  you  sometimes,  perhaps,  get  into  a  very 
ticklish  situation,  and  still  escape  scot-free.  In 
Old  Eng.  sceat  was  "  money,"  and  the  Old  Norse 
skattr  and  Goth,  skatts  had  the  same  meaning ; 
but  the  Irish  scath  means  "  a  herd,"  and  Old  Bul- 
garian skotu  was  one  of  the  many  Aryan  words 
for  cow.  Another  of  these  words  in  Skr.  is  rupa, 
whence  are  derived  rfipya,  "  money,"  and  the 
modern  rupee  of  Bengal. 

More  than  a  hundred  different  names  for  the 
horse  have  been  counted  in  Sanskrit,  but  most  of 
these  are  comparatively  modern  in  origin.  The 
only  one  we  need  notice  is  apva,  from  an  Old 


136          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Aryan  akva,  meaning  "  the  swift."  In  Lith.  the 
same  word  aszwa  is  the  name  of  the  mare  only, 
but  the  Lat.  equus  preserves  the  old  meaning. 
The  classic  Greek  TTTTTOS  does  not  sound  so  much 
like  equus  as  one  might  expect,  but  we  find  the 
requisite  transitions  in  the  Aiolic  *KKOS  and  Old 
Aiolic  */cFos.  In  Irish  nothing  is  left  but  the  first 
syllable,  ech.  In  Gothic  the  word  reappears  quite 
regularly  as  aihva,  and  in  Old  Eng.  this  is  clipped 
down  into  eoh.  Modern  English,  however,  and 
the  other  Teutonic  languages  have  lost  this  word 
and  replaced  it  by  another,  which  goes  back  to 
the  times  of  Teutonic  unity,  but  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  known  to  the  primitive  Aryans.  The 
Old  High  Germans  and  the  Norsemen  pronounced 
this  word  hross,  but  the  oldest  Teutonic  form  was 
probably  horsa,  from  a  root  Aor,  identical  with 
Lat.  currere,  "to  run."  Horse  is  accordingly 
connected  by  bonds  of  etymological  kinship  with 
its  descriptive  synonym  courser.  Modern  High 
German,  in  turn,  though  it  has  not  lost  the  word 
ross,  has  adopted  a  new  name,  pferd,  which  is  in 
more  frequent  use,  and  the  history  of  which  is 
extremely  curious. 

One  of  the  few  Keltic  words  which  the  Roman 
conquerors  adopted  from  their  Gaulish  subjects 
the  'vord  rheda,  used  to  describe  a  light  four. 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     137 

wheeled  carriage.  Such  carriages  were  used  for 
posting,  and  the  light,  swift  animal  which  drew 
them  received  a  special  name,  made  by  compound- 
ing the  root  of  veho,  to  "  draw  "  or  "  carry,"  with 
the  name  of  this  kind  of  carriage.  Thus  arose 
the  word  veredus,  "  the  drawer  of  the  rheda"  the 
post-horse,  or  courier's  horse;  and  so  veredarius 
was  a  post-classic  Latin  word  for  "  courier  ;  "  but 
the  name  veredus  was  not  long  in  becoming  gen- 
eralized, for  in  Martial  we  find  it  used  for  a  light, 
fleet  hunting  horse.  At  the  same  time  there  came 
into  general  use  the  curiously  hybrid  word  para- 
veredus,  made  by  prefixing  the  Greek  preposition 
Trapa,  meaning  "  beyond,"  to  veredus,  to  denote  an 
extra  post-horse  for  extraordinary  occasions.  This 
mongrel  word  paraveredus,  thus  oddly  made  up 
out  of  Greek,  Latin,  and  Keltic  elements,  seems 
to  have  been  a  favourite  name  for  the  horse  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  In  Ducange's  great  dictionary  of 
mediaeval  Latin  we  find  parvaredus,  parafredus, 
and  palafredus,  along  with  many  other  forms. 
From  palafredus  came  the  French  palefroi  and 
the  English  palfrey  ;  while  the  simple  contraction 
and  abbreviation  of  the  older  paraveredus  re- 
sulted in  the  form  pferd  adopted  by  the  modern 
German. 

As  the  Teutonic  languages  have  thus  adopted 


138          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

new  words  to  designate  the  horse,  so  the  modern 
Romanic  languages  have  generally  forgotten  equus 
and  substituted  for  it  the  name  which  appears  in 
French  as  cheval  and  in  Italian  as  caballo,  and 
from  which  we  have  obtained  such  words  as  cav- 
alry, chevalier,  and  chivalry.  Ancient  Greek  and 
Latin  both  had  this  word  caballus,  which,  as  ko- 
byla,  is  the  common  name  for  a  horse  in  the  Sla- 
vonic languages,  and  appears  also  in  Irish  as  capall 
and  in  Welsh  as  ceffyl.  We  do  not  find  any  such 
name  in  Sanskrit,  but  in  the  Kawi  of  the  island  of 
Java,  which  is  a  non-Aryan  Malay  language,  as 
full  of  Sanskrit  words  as  English  is  of  Latin 
words,  we  find  the  horse  called  capala,  and  side  by 
side  with  this  we  have  in  Sanskrit  the  adjective 
papala,  "  swift."  The  Sanskrit  quite  generally 
corrupted  Old  Aryan  ^-sounds  in  this  way,  as  we 
corrupt  Latin  sounds  in  English  when  we  say  sere- 
brum  and  Sisero  instead  of  kerebrum  and  J&kero  ; 
and  I  have  no  doubt  that  in  this  word  for  "swift " 
we  have  the  explanation  of  caballus.  Curiously 
enough,  the  modern  Greek  has  also  dropped  the 
classical  name  for  the  fleet-footed  beast,  and  sub- 
stituted oXoyor,  which  means  "  unreasoning,"  and 
in  former  times  was  applied  to  brutes  in  general. 
It  is  quite  remarkable  that  there  should  have 
been  such  vicissitudes  in  the  career  of  the  words 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     139 

which  describe  so  familiar  an  animal,  and  we 
need  no  better  illustration  to  convince  us  of  the 
danger,  above  pointed  out,  of  relying  too  confi- 
dently upon  negative  evidence  in  such  inquiries  as 
we  are  here  making.  Looking  at  the  contempo- 
rary names  only,  we  find  the  English  and  French 
saying  horse  and  cheval,  "  the  swift  runner," 
while  High  German  and  Greek  say  pferd,  "the 
extra  drawer  of  a  post-carriage,"  and  oAoyoi',  "  the 
brute,"  —  names  quite  distinct  both  in  sound  and 
in  meaning.  If  all  the  other  forms  had  been  lost 
and  replaced  by  new  words,  —  as  might  easily  be 
the  case  where  there  are  so  many  synonyms  for 
the  same  object,  —  we  might  perhaps  have  in- 
ferred that  there  was  no  common  Aryan  name 
for  the  horse,  and  that  hence  the  animal  was  not 
known  until  after  the  separation  of  Aryan  tribes 
had  begun  ;  but  this  would  have  been  very  plainly 
a  mistake. 

Besides  the  horse  and  cow,  the  primitive  Ar- 
yans had  domesticated  sheep,  goats,  and  pigs,  as 
well  as  dogs.  With  regard  to  the  cat,  the  case  is 
less  clear.  That  wild  species  of  the  cat  family 
were  known  seems  probable,  and  the  word  puss 
has  some  claim  to  an  Old  Aryan  pedigree,  for  we 
find  pushak  in  modern  Persian,  puize  in  Lithuan- 
ian, pusag  and  puss  in  Irish,  whence  we  have 


140  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

adopted  the  word ;  but  whether  the  primitive 
form  of  these  names  was  applied  to  a  wild  or  to  a 
domesticated  cat  is  uncertain.  With  this  excep- 
tion, the  Indo-European  names  are  all  different. 
In  Latin  we  have  felis,  in  Greek  alXovpos ;  but  we 
know  otherwise  that  the  Greeks  and  Romans  had 
no  domestic  cats,  but  kept  a  kind  of  weasel  to 
destroy  their  rats  and  mice.  In  our  own  and 
most  other  modern  European  languages  the  prin- 
cipal name  of  the  animal  is  borrowed  from  Latin ; 
but  the  Latin  catus  is  itself  an  imported  word 
from  a  non-Aryan  source.  It  is  the  Syriac  kato, 
Arabic  kitt,  indicating  that  the  cat  was  intro- 
duced into  Europe  from  the  Levant,  at  a  compar- 
atively recent  period. 

But  whether  the  Old  Aryans  had  domestic  cats 
or  not,  they  certainly  needed  them,  for  the  word 
mouse  occurs,  with  hardly  any  variation,  in  near- 
ly all  the  Indo-European  languages.  In  Latin, 
Greek,  Old  Norse,  Old  German,  and  Old  English 
it  is  mus ;  in  Russian  we  have  my  ski,  in  Bohe- 
mian mysh,  in  Persian  mush,  in  Sanskrit  musha, 
the  "pilfering  creature,"  the  "  little  thief." 

Flies  are  also  to  be  numbered  among  the  house- 
hold pests  of  Aryana  Vaejo  ;  the  old  name  was 
makshi,  the  "  buzzing  creature,"  and  is  preserved 
in  Zend  and  the  modern  Indian  languages.  In 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     141 

Europe  we  have  Lith.  musse,  Bohem.  musska, 
Lat.  musca,  O.  H.  G.  muccha,  Swed.  and  Old 
Eng.  mygge,  Eng.  midge,  of  which  the  diminu- 
tive midget,  or  "  little  fly,"  has  been  applied  aa 
a  caressing  epithet  to  children.  The  meaning  of 
the  more  common  Teutonic  name  "  fly  "  is  too  ob- 
vious to  require  mention. 

The  ordinary  Aryan  name  for  "  bee  "  —  Skr. 
bha,  O.  H.  G.  pia,  Old  Eng.  beo,  Eng.  bee  —  re- 
fers to  the  bright  colour  of  the  insect,  but  the 
Lat.  apis  is  the  "  thrifty  creature  "  and  the  Greek 
p.  f  \ia-aa  is  the  "  maker  of  honey."  The  Old  Ar- 
yans not  only  kept  bees  for  their  honey,  but  out  of 
the  honey  they  made  an  intoxicating  drink  called 
madhu,  from  which  we  have  the  Zend  madhu  and 
Greek  peOv,  "  wine,"  Russ.  m'edu,  Irish  meadh,  Old 
Eng.  medu,  Eng.  mead.  Wine  and  must  are  Old 
Aryan  words,  and  the  same  is  probably  true  of 
ale  ;  but  in  this  latter  instance  we  cannot  safely 
infer  that  what  we  call  ale  was  brewed,  for  the 
meaning  of  the  word  has  varied  considerably. 
Lith.  alus,  Old  Norse  ol,  Old  Eng.  eala,  mean 
"  beer,"  but  the  Skr.  all  means  a  spirituous 
liquor,  and  the  Irish  ol  is  applied  to  any  kind  of 
drink.  As  for  the  word  leer  itself,  it  is  doubtful 
if  it  can  be  traced  outside  of  the  Teutonic  lan- 
guages ;  for  although  it  occurs  in  Irish,  Welsh, 


142  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

and  modern  Persian,  it  does  not  conform  to 
Grimm's  law,  and  has  thus  most  likely  been  bor- 
rowed from  English  or  some  other  Teutonic 
source. 

Whether  our  Aryan  forefathers  brewed  ale  or 
not,  they  certainly  cultivated  barley  and  prob- 
ably wheat,  and  ground  them  into  meal  in  mills. 
They  were  familiar  with  the  plow,  the  yoke,  and 
the  spade.  Their  harvests  were  reaped  with  a 
sickle,  and  the  grain  was  duly  threshed  and  win- 
nowed, and  carried  to  mill  in  wagons  fitted  with 
wheels  and  axle-trees.  The  blacksmith's  work 
with  hammer  and  anvil,  forge  and  bellows,  was 
also  carried  on.  Sewing  and  spinning  were  fem- 
inine occupations,  and  garments  were  woven  out 
of  sheep's  wool.  The  art  of  tanning  was  also 
practised,  and  leather  shoes  were  worn.  The 
entire  career  of  the  Aryans  has  been  that  of  a 
warlike  people.  In  the  primitive  times  of  which 
we  are  treating,  their  principal  weapons  were  the 
lance,  the  bow  and  arrow,  the  sword  and  dagger 
and  mace,  with  helmet  and  buckler  for  defence. 

That  the  early  Aryans  were  acquainted  with 
the  sea  seems  unquestionable,  for  the  name  oc- 
curs, with  very  little  change  in  sound  and  hardly 
any  in  meaning,  in  nearly  all  the  Indo-European 
languages.  The  Lat.  mare,  whence  our  adjec 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     143 

tive  marine,  appears  in  Skr.  mira,  Russ.  moru, 
Lith.  mares,  Irish  muir,  Welsh  mor,  Goth,  marei, 
O.  H.  G.  mari,  Old  Norse  mar,  Old  Eng.  mere. 
In  English  meer  is  an  archaic  word,  still  used  in 
poetry  in  the  sense  of  "  lake,"  and  it  appears  in 
many  well-known  names  of  English  lakes,  as 
Grrasmere  and  Windermere.  The  original  sense 
of  the  word  has  something  poetic  in  it,  for  it 
means  the  barren,  desolate  waste,  just  as  we  find 
it  commonly  described  in  Homer.  The  Teutonic 
languages,  however,  have  generally  adopted  an- 
other name.  In  Skr.  sava  means  simply  "water," 
but  the  more  specific  sense  appears  in  Goth,  saivs, 
O.  H.  G.  seo,  Old  Eng.  scew,  Eng.  sea.  It  is 
noticeable  that  while  modern  English  applies  this 
name  to  great  bodies  of  water,  and  keeps  meer 
only  in  the  sense  of  lake,  in  modern  German  the 
case  is  just  the  reverse,  —  in  German  meer  is  the 
sea,  but  see  is  a  lake.  The  only  other  conspic- 
uous deviation  from  the  general  Aryan  usage  is  a 
very  characteristic  one.  The  Greeks,  who  were 
the  most  maritime  of  all  peoples  that  have  ex- 
isted, save  the  English,  had  three  names  for  the 
sea,  of  which  the  later  OaXaarara  and  ire\ayos  re- 
ferred to  the  boisterous,  white-crested  waves,  but 
the  earlier  U-O^TOS  meant  a  "  pathway  for  travel." 
What  large  bodies  of  water  the  primitive  Aryans 


144  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

could  have  known  is  not  fully  ascertained,  but 
they  were  perhaps  the  Caspian  and  the  Sea  of 
Aral.  On  these  inland  seas,  or  along  the  great 
rivers  which  flowed  through  their  country,  the 
Aryans  would  seem  to  have  plied  in  boats  rowed 
with  oars:  but  whether  they  had  advanced  far- 
ther than  this  is  uncertain.  At  all  events,  there 
is  a  singular  lack  of  agreement  among  all  the  com- 
mon words  indicative  of  a  higher  acquaintance 
with  the  art  of  navigation. 

With  these  illustrations  we  must  bring  our  ex- 
position too  abruptly  to  a  close.  By  the  course 
of  inquiry  we  have  followed,  something  might  be 
brought  out  concerning  the  political  organization 
of  the  primitive  Aryans,  which  appears  to  have 
been  extremely  simple.  "  The  people,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Whitney,  "  was  doubtless  a  congeries  of 
petty  tribes,  under  chiefs  and  leaders  rather  than 
kings,  and  with  institutions  of  a  patriarchal  cast, 
among  which  the  reduction  to  servitude  of  prison- 
ers taken  in  war  appears  not  to  have  been  want- 
ing." This  inquiry,  however,  would  take  us  far 
beyond  our  limits,  and  might  be  more  advanta- 
geously conducted  in  another  connection,  where 
we  might  avail  ourselves  of  the  harmonious  results 
which  Sir  Henry  Maine,  Mr.  Freeman,  and  others 
have  elicited  from  a  comparative  survey  of  Indo- 


What  we  Learn  from  Old  Aryan  Words.     146 

European  politics  and  jurisprudence.  But  this 
most  interesting  and  profitable  study  must  bd 
postponed  to  another  occasion.  In  the  present, 
paper,  confining  myself  chiefly  to  the  material 
circumstances  of  the  primitive  Aryans,  I  hav«/ 
endeavoured  only  to  give  some  idea  of  the  method 
by  which  sound  conclusions  are  reached,  through 
the  study  of  words,  concerning  the  civilization  of 
an  age  of  which  the  historic  tradition  has  been 
utterly  lost.  More  than  this  could  not  well  be 
attempted  in  so  brief  an  exposition.  The  ex- 
amples have  been  scanty,  and  from  the  nature  o5 
the  subject  they  may  perhaps  have  seemed  rather 
dry.  It  is  not  in  a  moment  that  one  can  become 
fully  possessed  with  the  rare  fascination  which 
surrounds  the  study  of  the  historic  lessons  con- 
veyed in  words.  Yet  possibly  to  some  reader  it 
may  have  come  as  a  novel  and  striking  thought 
that  out  of  mere  grammars  and  dictionaries  a 
trustworthy  picture  of  the  long-forgotten  past 
may  be  reconstructed.  Inadequate  as  our  illus- 
trations have  been,  none  can  fail  to  perceive  the 
historic  interest  and  value  of  the  information 
which  has  been  gained  in  this  way.  Inquiries  of 
this  sort  need,  no  doubt,  much  caution  and  sa- 
gacity to  be  conducted  successfully ;  but  when 
properly  sifted  there  is  no  more  unimpeachable 
10 


146          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

testimony  to  the  past  than  that  which  the  aspect 
of  words  gives  us.  For  the  changes  of  vowel 
and  consonant  proceed  according  to  general  laws 
which  observation  may  detect,  but  with  which  no 
individual  will  is  able  to  tamper.  And  thus  it  is 
that  in  the  winged  word  which  seems  to  perish 
in  its  flight  through  the  air  we  have  nevertheless 
the  most  abiding  record,  though  unwittingly  pre- 
served, of  the  knowledge  and  achievements  of 
mankind. 

August,  1876. 


V. 

WAS  THERE  A  PRIMEVAL  MOTHER-TONGUE? 

OF  all  the  great  changes  in  thought  which  the 
present  century  has  witnessed,  perhaps  none  is 
more  striking  than  that  which  has  occurred  in 
our  methods  of  studying  the  beginnings  of  human 
culture.  The  discoveries  of  Grimm  and  Bopp  in 
comparative  philology,  the  decipherment  of  mys- 
terious inscriptions  in  Egypt  and  Assyria,  the 
study  of  legal  archaeology  illustrated  by  Sir  Henry 
Maine,  the  doctrine  of  survivals  so  ably  expounded 
by  Mr.  Tylor,  and  especially  the  geologic  proof 
of  the  enormous  antiquity  of  the  human  race,  to- 
gether with  the  wide-reaching  and  powerful  spec- 
ulations of  Mr.  Darwin,  have  all  contributed,  to 
bring  about  this  change.  So  completely  has  our 
point  of  view  been  shifted  by  these  various  theo- 
ries and  discoveries  that  many  speculations  which 
at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  possessed 
an  absorbing  interest  have  now  come  to  seem  friv- 
olous or  irrelevant ;  and  nothing  can  better  il- 
lustrate the  extent  of  the  change  than  the  fate  of 


148          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

some  of  these  speculations.     It  is  not  many  years 
since  ethnologists  were  racking  their  brains   to 
show  how  the   North   American    Indians   might 
have  come  over  from  Asia ;  and  there  was  felt  to 
*  be  a  sort  of  speculative  necessity  for  discovering 
points   of    resemblance    between    American   lan- 
guages, myths,  and  social  observances  and  those 
of  the  Oriental  world.     Now  the  Aborigines  of 
this  continent  were  made  out  to  be  Kamtchat- 
kans,  and  now  Chinamen,   and  again  they  were 
shown,  with  quaint  erudition,  to  be  remnants  of 
the  ten  tribes  of  Israel.     Perhaps  none  of  these 
theories  have  been  exactly  disproved,  but  they 
have  all  been  superseded,  and  have  lost  their  in- 
terest.    We  now  know  that  in  the  earliest  post- 
Pliocene  times,  if  not  in  the  Pliocene  age  itself, 
at  least   four  hundred  thousand   years  ago,  the 
American  continent  was  inhabited  by  human  be- 
ings.    The  primeval  Californian  skull,  moreover, 
resembles  the  modern  American  Indian  type,  and 
is  not  to  be  confounded  with  Old  World  skulls. 
It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  far  back  in  post- 
Pliocene  times,  before  the   great  glacial  period, 
the  ancestors  of   the  American  Indians  had  al- 
ready become  distinguished    from    the   races  of 
Asia.     Now  both  before  and  since  that  time  the 
eastern  and  western  continents  have  been  repeat- 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue  ?      149 

edly  joined  together  at  their  northern  extremities. 
In  view  of  such  facts,  whatever  opinion  we  may 
ultimately  adopt,  we  feel  that  all  theories  of  the 
recent  colonization  of  America  by  Kamtchatkans, 
or  Chinamen,  or  the  ten  tribes  of  Israel,  are  su- 
perseded and  laid  on  the  shelf.  That  recent 
migrations  may  have  occurred  is  quite  another 
affair.  Theories  like  those  of  Brasseur  de  Bour- 
bourg  are  still  to  be  treated  on  their  own  merits, 
independently  of  general  considerations.  But  one 
now  perceives,  in  reading  them,  that  they  were 
dictated  by  a  kind  of  speculative  necessity  which 
we  no  longer  feel,  because  our  whole  point  of 
view  has  been  shifted. 

In  similar  wise  have  fared  the  innumerable 
plans  which  formerly  occupied  the  attention  of 
scholars  for  colonizing  the  whole  world  from  the 
highlands  of  Armenia.  The  ethnological  infor- 
mation contained  in  the  book  of  Genesis  is  of 
great  interest  and  value,  but  so  far  from  relating 
to  the  whole  human  race,  it  totally  ignores  the 
larger  part  of  the  world,  and  is  concerned  only 
with  the  peoples  of  which  an  inhabitant  of  Syria 
might  be  expected  to  know  something.  Long  be- 
fore any  possible  date  for  the  diffusion  from  Ar- 
menia there  described,  we  know  that  populous 
and  stationary  communities  flourished  on  the 


150  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

banks  of  the  Nile  and  the  Euphrates ;  while  sav- 
age or  barbarous  tribes,  using  stone  hatchets  and 
flint-headed  arrows,  wandered  through  the  prime- 
val forests  of  Europe  and  America.  Armenia  re- 
tains its  interest,  to  some  extent,  as  a  possible 
starting  point,  but  only  in  connection  with  the 
Semitic  race  and  its  neighbours,  —  so  thoroughly 
have  our  notions  been  remodelled. 

Old-fashioned  speculations  concerning  the  prim- 
itive unity  of  human  speech  have  similarly  fallen 
into  discredit.  Previous  to  the  detection  of  the 
kinship  between  the  various  forms  of  Aryan 
speech,  no  end  of  books  were  written  to  prove 
that  all  known  languages  were  in  some  way  de- 
scended from  Hebrew ;  not  that  there  was  any 
warrant  for  such  an  opinion,  either  in  Scripture  or 
in  the  general  probabilities  of  the  case,  but  that 
the  preeminence  of  Hebrew  as  the  language  of 
Jehovah's  chosen  people  and  the  vehicle  of  divine 
revelation  created  a  speculative  need  for  proving 
it  to  be  the  original  uncorrupted  dialect  of  man- 
kind. Since  the  establishment  of  the  Aryan  fam- 
ily of  languages,  it  has  still  been  felt  necessary  to 
prove  that  all  existing  varieties  of  speech  have 
had  a  common  origin,  and  as  a  step  toward  this 
end  great  learning  and  ingenuity  have  been  ex- 
pended in  the  attempt  to  detect  some  primordial 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue  ?     151 

similarity  between  the  Semitic  languages  and  lan- 
guages of  Aryan  descent. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  all  this  learning 
and  ingenuity  have  been  utterly  wasted.  Apart 
from  a  few  casual  coincidences,  as  in  the  Hebrew 
and  Sanskrit  words  for  six,  there  is  not  a  trace  of 
similarity  between  the  Semitic  and  the  Aryan  vo- 
cabularies ;  while  as  regards  both  inflection  and 
syntax,  the  entire  structure  of  these  two  families 
of  speech  is  so  radically  unlike,  that  only  the  most 
desperate  feeling  of  speculative  necessity  could 
ever  have  induced  any  one  to  seek  a  common  orig- 
inal for  the  two.  But  after  getting  irretrievably 
worsted  in  the  encounter  with  facts,  this  specu- 
lative craving  is  now  outgrown  and  laid  aside  with 
the  others.  The  antiquity  of  the  human  race 
again  comes  in  to  alter  entirely  our  stand-point. 
Considering  how  multifariously  language  varies 
from  age  to  age,  and  considering  that  mankind 
has  doubtless  possessed  the  power  of  articulate 
speech  for  some  thousands  of  centuries,  it  no 
longer  seems  worth  while  to  seek  immediate  con- 
clusions about  primitive  speech  from  linguistic 
records  which  do  not  carry  us  back  more  than  four 
or  five  thousand  years. 

From  the  vantage-ground  which  we  now  oc- 
cupy, it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  the  hypothesis 


152          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

of  a  single  primeval  language,  from  which  all  ex- 
isting languages  have  descended,  involves  an  ab- 
surd assumption.  Those  who  maintain  such  an 
hypothesis,  in  so  far  as  their  statements  have  any 
definite  and  tangible  meaning,  must  mean  that  all 
existing  languages  stand  in  relation  to  the  hypo- 
thetical primitive  language  very  much  as  French 
and  Italian  stand  in  relation  to  Latin,  or  English 
and  German  to  Old  Teutonic,  or  Latin  and  Old 
Teutonic  to  Old  Aryan.  But  in  point  of  fact  the 
case  is  very  different  from  this.  We  know  that 
French  and  Italian  are  differently  modified  forms 
of  Latin,  because  we  can  trace  the  modern  words 
directly  back  to  their  ancient  prototypes,  and  ver- 
ify by  the  aid  of  written  documents  their  various 
changes  of  form  and  meaning.  After  carrying 
on  for  a  while  this  process  of  comparison,  we  find 
that  the  modern  words  vary  from  the  ancient  ac- 
cording to  certain  well-defined  rules,  which  are 
different  for  French  and  Italian,  but  are  singu- 
larly uniform  for  each  language.  So  unmistak- 
able is  the  regularity  of  the  system  of  changes, 
that  if  all  record  of  Latin  were  to  be  swept  away 
we  might  still  reconstruct  the  language  from  a 
comparative  study  of  its  modern  descendants. 
Mois  and  mese,  for  example,  the  French  and  Ital- 
ian words  for  "  month,"  would  give  us  the  Latin 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother-Tongue  ?    153 

mensis,  and  nothing  else ;  and  so  on  throughout. 
In  similar  wise,  although  the  Old  Aryan  lan- 
guage has  left  no  written  documents  to  tell  us  of 
its  grammar  and  vocabulary,  we  have  neverthe- 
less detected  such  a  regular  system  of  phonetic 
changes  among  the  languages  which  have  de- 
scended from  it  that  we  have  been  already  ena- 
bled to  go  some  way  toward  reconstructing  this 
extinct  tongue.  Month  and  mensis,  for  example, 
carry  us  back,  with  little  less  than  absolute  cer- 
tainty, to  an  Old  Aryan  mansa ;  and  so  on  as 
before,  though  here  the  inquiry  is  an  abstruse  one, 
requiring  patience  and  sound  judgment,  and  there 
is  room  enough  for  doubt  in  many  cases.  The 
general  relationship  of  the  Aryan  languages  to 
their  common  ancestor  is,  however,  no  less  clearly 
manifest  than  that  of  the  modern  Romanic  lan- 
guages to  the  Latin.  After  fifty  years  of  such 
comparative  study,  in  a  cautious  and  prudent  wajT, 
we  have  succeeded  in  making  out  some  few  cases 
of  demonstrable  genetic  kinship  among  groups  of 
languages.  Beside  the  Aryan  family,  in  the  study 
of  which  such  profound  knowledge  has  been  ob- 
tained, we  have  clearly  made  out  the  existence  of 
the  Dravidian  family  in  Southern  India,  and  of 
the  Altaic  family,  —  to  which  the  Finnish,  Hun- 
garian, and  Turkish  belong,  —  to  say  nothing  of 


154  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

the  long-established  Semitic  family.  Other  fami- 
lies of  speech  no  doubt  exist,  and  will  by  and  by 
have  their  relationships  definitely  marked  out. 
But  the  moment  we  try  to  compare  these  families 
with  each  other,  in  order  to  detect  some  definable 
link  of  relationship  between  them,  we  are  in- 
stantly baffled.  Any  true  family  of  languages 
will  show  a  community  of  structure  as  conspicu- 
ous as  that  which  is  seen  among  vertebrate  .ani- 
mals. The  next  family  you  study  will  be  as  dis- 
tinctly marked  in  its  characteristics  as  is  the 
group  of  articulated  insects,  spiders,  and  crusta- 
ceans. But  to  compare  the  two  families  with 
each  other  will  prove  as  futile  as  to  compare  a 
reindeer  with  a  lobster.  The  only  conclusion  to 
which  you  can  logically  come  is  that  while  cer- 
tain languages,  here  and  there,  have  become  vari- 
ously modified,  so  as  to  give  rise  to  well-defined 
families  of  speech,  the  like  process  has  not  taken 
place  universally.  In  other  words,  the  derivation 
of  a  dozen  languages  from  a  common  ancestor  is 
not  a  permanent  and  universal,  but  a  temporary 
and  local  phenomenon  in  the  history  of  human 
speech,  and  we  need  not  expect  to  come  across 
any  such  fact  of  derivation,  except  where  it  can 
be  duly  accounted  for  by  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances of  the  case. 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue  ?     155 

This  conclusion  is  reinforced  when  we  consider 
the  circumstances  under  which  a  single  language 
gives  rise  to  several  mutually  resembling  descend- 
ants. Obviously  such  a  language  must  have  a 
high  degree  of  permanence  and  a  wide  extension. 
It  must  be  spoken  for  a  long  time  by  large  bodies 
of  men  spread  over  a  wide  territorial  area.  Take, 
for  example,  the  rise  of  the  modern  Romanic 
languages  from  the  Latin.  In  the  fourth  century 
after  Christ  the  Latin  language  was  spoken  all 
over  the  Italian  and  Spanish  peninsulas,  through- 
out most  of  Gaul  and  Switzerland,  along  the 
banks  of  the  Upper  Danube,  and  in  what  are 
now  called  the  Rumanian  principalities.  In  all 
these  countries  Latin  was  the  speech  in  which 
the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  were  transacted,  and 
this  had  come  to  be  so  mainly  because  the  native 
dialects  of  these  countries  were  numerous  and 
uncultivated ;  and  as  all  were  in  close  political 
and  social  connection  with  Rome,  it  was  a  much 
simpler  matter  for  all  to  learn  Latin  than  for  the 
Romans  and  their  subjects  alike  to  learn  a  score 
of  barbarous  tongues.  The  business  of  life  got. 
more  easily  transacted  in  this  way.  No  such  re- 
sult followed  the  conquest  of  the  Eastern  world, 
because  Greek  was  spoken  all  over  the  East,  and 
every  educated  Roman  knew  Greek  already  ;  so 


156  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

that  in  this  case  it  was  a  simpler  matter  for  the 
conquerors  to  talk  Greek  than  for  their  subjects 
to  learn  Latin.  Practical  convenience  is  the  final 
arbiter  in  pretty  much  all  such  cases.  Now  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  the  Latin  talked  all 
over  the  West  was  quite  like  the  elegant  language 
of  Caesar  and  Virgil.  It  was  only  educated  people 
in  Rome  or  Milan,  and  perhaps  in  such  cities  as 
Nismes  or  Lyons,  that  talked  like  this.  Colloquial 
Latin  always  had  plenty  of  dialectic  peculiarities. 
Even  in  Italy  the  Latin  had  supplanted,  in  former 
times,  a  number  of  kindred  Umbrian  and  Sabine 
dialects,  and  we  may  be  sure  that  all  these  left 
their  mark  upon  the  common  speech.  In  getting 
diffused  over  Europe,  this  impure  colloquial  Latin 
could  not  fail  to  pick  up  here  and  there  some  pe- 
culiar word  or  phrase,  while  now  and  then  some 
other  word  or  phrase  would  be  lost  from  its  old 
stock  and  forgotten,  so  that  people  did  not  talk 
just  alike  throughout  the  empire.  A  Spaniard's 
local  peculiarities  of  utterance  and  phraseology 
were  distinguishable  from  those  of  a  Rhaetian, 
though  both  talked  Latin  and  could  understand 
each  other. 

Now  as  every  language  changes  more  or  less 
from  age  to  age,  so  the  speech  of  the  Romans  in 
the  fourth  century  after  Christ  had  come  to  differ 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother-Tongue?     157 

in  many  respects  from  the  speech  of  their  fore- 
fathers who,  six  hundred  years  earlier,  had  fought 
against  Hannibal.  But  up  to  this  time  the  inter- 
course between  the  various  parts  of  the  Roman 
world  had  been  so  close  and  continuous  that  the 
capital  still  furnished  the  standard  of  discourse 
for  the  whole  empire.  During  the  next  six  cen- 
turies a  different  set  of  circumstances  was  at 
work.  For  a  second  time  the  Latin  language  was 
learned  by  scores  of  barbarous  tribes,  but  this 
time  it  was  no  longer  Rome  that  set  the  fashion 
and  maintained  the  standard.  In  innumerable 
provincial  towns  and  barbaric  assemblies  new 
standards  of  speaking  were  gradually  established. 
The  lines  of  connection,  administrative  and  com- 
mercial, which  had  formerly  been  kept  up,  were 
in  many  cases  severed,  and  each  little  tract  of 
country  led  a  more  sequestered  life  than  before. 
Many  new  expressions  came  into  use,  — Teutonic 
in  Gaul  and  Italy,  Arabic  in  Spain,  Slavic  in 
Rumania  ;  and  local  idioms  and  peculiarities  of 
accent  multiplied,  in  the  absence  of  a  uniform 
standard.  In  this  way  the  vulgar  Latin  insensi- 
bly diverged  into  a  host  of  provincial  dialects,  or 
patois,  the  divergence  being  great  or  little  accord- 
ing to  the  frequency  of  intercourse  between  dif- 
ferent localities.  Thus  the  Tuscan  and  the  Sa- 


158  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

voyard  could  both  understand  the  Milanese,  the 
inhabitant  of  Lyons  could  talk  with  the  Savoyard 
and  with  the  citizen  of  Orleans,  and  the  Orleanese 
would  be  intelligible  to  the  Parisian  ;  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  Parisian  could  hardly  carry 
on  a  conversation  with  the  Savoyard,  and  would 
be  quite  incapable  of  understanding  the  Tuscan. 
Some  such  slowly-graded  transition  may  still  be 
noticed  by  the  traveller  from  France  to  Italy  who 
takes  pains  to  observe  the  speech  of  the  common 
people.  At  Nice,  for  instance,  local  newspapers 
are  published  in  a  dialect  which  one  hardly  knows 
whether  to  call  French,  Provengal,  or  Italian. 

After  this  process  of  divergence  had  gone  on 
for  some  time,  a  new  start  was  taken  toward  uni- 
formity, but  in  such  a  way  as  to  enhance  and 
complete  the  divergence  already  begun.  When 
literary  men  gave  up  trying  to  write  classical 
Latin,  and  began  to  clothe  their  thoughts  in  the 
colloquial  Romance  or  vulgar  tongue  of  the  times, 
new  centres  of  political  and  intellectual  life  had 
begun  to  be  formed  at  Paris,  Toulouse,  and  Flor- 
ence ;  and  the  dialects  of  these  cities  began  to 
assume  preeminence  as  literary  and  fashionable 
dialects.  As  southern  France  came  more  and 
more  under  the  sway  of  Paris,  the  second  of  these 
centres  indeed  lost  its  relative  importance,  and 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother-Tongue?    159 

the  Provencal  tongue  gradually  sank  into  an  un- 
fashionable patois  ;  but  Parisian  and  Tuscan,  on 
the  other  hand,  came  to  be  so  generally  read  and 
spoken  that  after  a  while  they  quite  crowded 
their  intermediate  sister  dialects  out  of  sight,  and 
to-day  they  are  the  sole  recognized  representatives 
of  good  French  and  good  Italian  speech,  although 
there  is  still  a  great  deal  of  French  spoken  that  is 
not  Parisian,  and  a  great  deal  of  Italian  that  is 
not  Tuscan.  This  predominance  of  the  two  cen- 
tral dialects  is  in  our  day  increasing  more  rapidly 
and  decisively  than  ever  before,  and  the  process 
will  unquestionably  go  on  until  all  Frenchmen 
speak  Parisian,  and  all  Italians  speak  Tuscan. 
Railroads  and  telegraphs,  newspapers  and  novels, 
have  already  sealed  the  death-warrant  of  all  patois, 
and  the  execution  is  only  a  question  of  time.  It  is 
because  of  the  wide  diffusion  in  our  own  country 
of  these  powerful  agencies  for  keeping  men  in 
contact  with  each  other  that  we  have  no  varieties 
of  dialect  here  worth  speaking  of.  It  is  not  at 
all  likely  that  in  this  countiy  such  dialectic  va- 
riations will  ever  spring  up.  And  for  the  same 
reason  it  is  not  likely  that  any  essential  divergence 
will  ever  arise  between  the  English  language  as 
spoken  in  England  and  the  same  language  as 
spoken  in  America.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  wolves, 


160          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

brute  and  human,  tax-gatherers  and  robber  bar- 
ons, as  well  as  bad  roads  and  imperfect  vehi- 
cles, made  a  few  miles  of  wood  or  mountain  a 
greater  barrier  to  intercourse  than  the  wide 
ocean  is  to-day.  For  the  language  of  the  thriv- 
ing people  to  whom,  as  to  the  ancient  Greeks, 
the  ocean  has  become  (irdvros)  a  common  "  path- 
way ; "  who  have  taught  mankind  how  to  drive 
ships  with  steam,  and  how  to  send  electric  flashes 
of  intelligence  through  the  watery  abyss,  —  for 
this  language  a  future  of  unprecedented  glory 
is  in  store.  By  the  end  of  the  twentieth  century, 
English  will  no  doubt  be  spoken  by  something 
like  eight  hundred  million  people,  crowding  all 
over  North  America  and  Australia,  as  well  as 
over  a  good  part  of  Africa  and  India,  with  island 
colonies  in  every  sea  and  naval  stations  on  every 
cape.  By  that  time  so  large  a  proportion  of  the 
business  of  the  world  will  be  transacted  by  people 
of  English  descent  that,  as  a  mere  matter  of  con- 
venience, the  whole  world  will  have  to  learn  Eng- 
lish. Whatever  other  language  any  one  may  have 
learned  in  childhood,  he  will  find  it  necessary  to 
speak  English  also.  In  this  way  our  language 
will  become  more  and  more  cosmopolitan,  while 
all  others  become  more  and  more  provincial,  until 
after  a  great  length  of  time  they  will  probably 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue?     161 

one  after  another  assume  the  character  and  incur 
the  fate  of  local  patois.  One  by  one  they  will  be- 
come extinct,  leaving  English  as  the  universal  lan- 
guage of  mankind. 

There  is,  I  think,  a  considerable  probability 
that  things  will  come  to  pass  in  this  way,  though 
the  process  must  of  course  be  a  very  slow  one, 
and  the  result  here  prefigured  will  very  likely 
come  so  far  down  in  the  future  as  to  coincide  with 
the  disappearance  of  barbarism  from  the  earth, 
and  with  the  inauguration  of  that  pacific  "  parlia- 
ment of  man  "  of  which  the  philosophic  poet  has 
told  us.  But,  however  the  actual  result  may 
shape  itself  in  its  details,  the  considerations  here 
brought  forward  would  seem  to  indicate  that  com- 
plete community  of  speech  belongs  rather  to  the 
later  than  to  the  earlier  stages  of  human  progress. 
What  we  may  regard  as  certain  is  that  community 
of  speech  on  a  wide  scale  requires  prolonged  and 
continuous  business  communication  among  large 
bodies  of  men.  Where  communication  is  seriously 
interrupted  for  a  long  period  of  time,  as  in  the 
Dark  Ages  of  Europe,  the  tendency  is  for  the  com- 
mon language  to  break  up  into  a  number  of  more 
or  less  similar  dialects ;  and  in  proportion  as  fre- 
quent communication  is  resumed  there  is  mani- 
fested an  opposite  tendency  of  a  few  central  dia- 
11 


162  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

lects  to  crush  out  their  neighbours,  and  to  grow 
into  wide-spread  languages.  This  is,  in  brief,  the 
way  in  which  languages  grow,  and  diverge,  and 
supplant  one  another.  There  is  nothing  that  is 
mysterious  or  metaphysical  in  the  process  ;  it  is 
purely  a  matter  of  practical  convenience.  In  the 
long  run  the  actions  of  man  are  determined  by 
what  we  may  call  the  "  law  of  least  effort :  "  the 
easiest  way  of  doing  things  is  the  one  which, 
sooner  or  later,  is  sure  to  be  adopted ;  and  to  this 
general  law  the  myriad  little  actions  involved  in 
speech  form  no  exception. 

Carrying  back  to  ancient  times  the  lessons  we 
have  learned  from  the  career  of  Latin,  we  find  that 
the  facts,  so  far  as  known,  sustain  our  conclusion. 
Among  the  Semitic  peoples  there  was  undoubtedly 
a  time  when  all  were  of  one  blood  and  one  speech. 
No  one  doubts  that  Arabs,  Jews,  and  Syrians  are 
as  closely  related  by  descent  as  Germans,  Swedes, 
and  Englishmen.  The  social  condition  of  these 
Semitic  races,  shortly  before  the  historic  period, 
is  best  represented  by  the  wandering  Arabs  of  the 
present  day.  In  this  patriarchal  stage  of  society 
there  is  no  such  close  political  cohesion  as  there  is 
among  nations  of  modern  type,  but  there  is  fre- 
quent intercourse  for  business  purposes,  and  even 
sometimes  for  purely  literary  objects,  as  in  the 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue?     163 

old  competitions  of  bards  at  Mecca  before  the 
time  of  Mohammed ;  and  this  intercourse  has 
sufficed  to  preserve  the  main  features  of  the  lan- 
guage. In  early  times  there  was  sufficient  com- 
munication between  the  patriarchal  tribes  of 
Arabia  and  Palestine  and  the  adjacent  civilized 
nations  of  Assyria,  Babylonia,  and  Phoenicia  to 
prevent  any  very  wide  divergence  of  speech. 
The  differences  between  Hebrew,  Syriac,  and 
Assyrian  are  not  greater  than  the  differences 
between  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian. 

So,  too,  in  the  direct  line  of  our  own  ancestry, 
we  find  that  the  primitive  Aryans  were  a  race 
partly  agricultural  and  partly  pastoral  in  pursuits, 
living  in  durable  houses,  grouped  together  into 
large  villages,  surrounded  by  defensible  walls. 
The  structure  of  the  family  was  somewhat  cruder 
than  among  the  patriarchal  Arabs  and  Hebrews  ; 
the  social  and  political  system  may  have  been  in 
some  respects  such  as  we  see  vestiges  of  to-day 
in  the  village  communities  of  Russia  and  Hindus- 
tan. Preeminent  among  all  early  races  in  the 
rearing  of  flocks  and  herds,  the  old  Aryans  re- 
quired immense  grazing  grounds,  and  would  seem 
to  have  occupied  all  the  wide  grassy  plains  which 
lie  between  the  mountains  of  central  Tartary  and 
the  southern  slopes  of  European  Russia.  At  the 


164          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

same  time  their  agricultural  pursuits  and  their 
durable  villages  imply  a  considerable  amount  of 
political  stability,  and  there  is  good  evidence  that 
for  a  long  time  a  common  language  was  spoken 
throughout  this  vast  territory.  As  we  follow 
these  Aryan  tribes  in  their  great  career  of  perma- 
nent conquest  and  settlement,  one  branch  into 
Persia  and  India,  and  other  branches  into  Greece, 
Italy,  Germany,  Gaul,  and  Britain,  we  come  upon 
the  same  linguistic  phenomena  which  we  observed 
above  in  the  mediaeval  history  of  Latin.  With 
the  isolation  of  the  various  tribes,  separated  from 
each  other  by  wide  distances,  we  see  the  Aryan 
mother-tongue  break  up  into  innumerable  dialec- 
tic forms  ;  until,  by  and  by,  with  the  rise  of  new 
and  distinct  centres  of  social  life,  new  and  dis- 
tinct languages  come  upon  the  scene,  and  acquire 
literary  immortality  in  the  Vedas,  in  the  Avesta, 
in  the  epics  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  in  the  novels  of 
Cervantes  and  Turgenief,  in  the  sermons  of  -Bos- 
suet  and  Taylor,  in  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare 
and  Goethe,  and  in  that  palladium  of  linguistic 
stability  in  the  future,  —  the  English  version  of 
the  Bible. 

In  such  cases  as  these,  where  a  single  durable 
mother  -  language  has  produced  several  durable 
offspring,  the  signs  of  kinship,  whether  in  gram- 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue?     165 

mar  or  in  vocabulary,  are  never  obliterated. 
After  an  independent  career  of  more  than  ten 
centuries,  the  genetic  relationship  of  French  and 
Italian  is  a  perfectly  patent  fact,  about  which 
there  could  be  no  question  whatever,  even  if  all 
memory  of  the  Roman  Empire  had  lapsed  from 
men's  minds,  even  if  some  fanatical  Cardinal 
Ximenes  had  burned  in  a  bonfire  every  scrap  of 
French  and  Italian  literature  that  ever  existed. 
After  an  independent  career  of  not  less  than  forty 
centuries,  the  kinship  of  Latin  and  Sanskrit  is 
equally  unmistakable.  It  is  not  an  occult  fact, 
which  discloses  itself  only  after  a  subtle  philologi- 
cal analysis ;  it  is  a  fact  so  plain  that  no  one  who 
reads  Sanskrit  and  Latin  books  can  possibly  over- 
look it,  and  it  forced  itself  upon  the  attention  of 
the  first  European  scholars  who  studied  Sanskrit 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  though  they  knew 
nothing  of  philological  analysis  as  we  understand 
it.  The  similarity  between  the  long-known  He- 
brew and  the  lately-deciphered  Assyrian  is  no  less 
conspicuous ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the 
Dravidian  languages  of  southern  India  when  com- 
pared with  one  another. 

But  as  we  leave  this  circle  of  studies,  and  ven- 
ture out  into  the  wilderness  of  barbaric  speech, 
we  find  a  very  different  state  of  things.  The 


166  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

northern  portions  of  Asia  have  been  inhabited, 
within  the  period  of  history,  by  three  different 
races,  all  of  whom  still  survive,  —  the  Finno- 
Tataric,  the  Mongolian,  and  the  Samoyedic  races. 
The  linguistic  relationships  of  these  peoples  are 
very  instructive.  In  the  first  place,  the  Finno- 
Tataric  peoples  appear  to  belong  to  the  same 
white  race  from  which  the  Aryans  and  the  Semites 
have  diverged,  although  there  is  nothing  remotely 
resembling  Aryan  or  Semitic  in  Finno-Tataric 
speech.  This  family  of  languages  is  represented 
in  Europe  by  the  Finnish  and  its  neighbouring 
dialects,  by  the  Hungarian,  and  by  the  Turkish. 
In  Asia  it  is  represented  by  a  great  number  of 
languages,  spoken  in  the  Caucasus,  in  Turkistan, 
and  in  Siberia.  Eastward  of  this  vast  region 
comes  the  Mongolian  or  yellow  race,  with  which 
we  should  be  very  careful  not  to  confound  the 
Tatars.  There  has  always  been  a  great  deal  of 
confusion  of  nomenclature  in  speaking  of  these 
races,  but  the  lines  of  distinction  are  really  simple 
enough  when  we  have  once  learned  them.  The 
ambiguous  word  which  is  responsible  for  most  of 
the  confusion  is  the  epithet  Tatar,  which  did 
originally  belong  to  the  Mongols,  but  has  come  to 
be  applied  by  preference  to  the  Turkish  family. 
When  Jinghis  Khan,  in  the  thirteenth  century, 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue?    167 

made  the  name  Tatar  a  sign  of  terror  and  humil- 
iation to  all  Asia  and  Europe,  it  became  cus- 
tomary to  apply  this  dreaded  epithet  to  all  the 
hordes  that  were  subject  to  the  Mongolian  ruler, 
—  changing  the  word  slightly  to  "  Tartar,"  so  as 
to  add  to  it  a  mild  flavour  of  the  bottomless  pit, 
in  allusion  to  the  general  behaviour  of  those  ugly 
customers.  As  most  of  these  hordes  with  which 
Europeans  came  into  contact  were  really  of  white 
or  Turkish  race,  the  name  Tatar  became  gradu- 
ally appropriated  to  these,  and  thus  became  unfit 
for  distinguishing  the  yellow  Mongolians.  All 
ambiguity  would  be  avoided  if  we  were  to  drop 
the  name  Tatar  altogether,  and  substitute  the 
name  Turk  for  the  whole  group  of  peoples  of 
which  the  Ottomans  are  the  most  conspicuous. 
Our  school  atlases  already  have  "  Turkistan  "  in- 
stead of  the  old  -  fashioned  "  Independent  Tar- 
tary." 

The  Mongolian  race  comprises  the  yellow  tribes 
of  central  Asia,  from  whom  came  Jinghis  Khan, 
Timur,  and  the  whole  line  of  Mogul  sovereigns  of 
India ;  and  also  the  Tungusians,  or  Mandshus, 
who  for  the  last  two  centuries  have  ruled  over 
China.  The  Chinese  themselves,  as  well  as  the 
Japanese,  must  also  be  considered  as  branches  of 
the  Mongolian  race.  On  the  other  hand,  the 


168  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Samoveds  of  northern  Siberia  seem  to  be  allied 
to  our  Eskimos,  but  not  very  obviously  to  the 
Mongolians. 

The  race  divisions  of  the  northern  half  of  Asia 
are  thus  clear  enough.  First,  we  have  the  Finno- 
Tatars,  or  Finno-Turks,  belonging  to  the  dark 
haired  portion  of  the  great  white  race ;  secondly, 
we  have  the  Mongolians  ;  thirdly,  the  arctic 
Samoyeds.  But  the  languages  spoken  by  these 
peoples  cannot  be  classified  in  any  such  simple 
way.  The  languages  of  the  Finns  and  Turks 
carry  us  back  to  two  mother- tongues,  and  these 
are  possibly  reducible  to  one.  It  is  otherwise 
when  we  come  to  Mongolian  speech.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  Mongolian  dialects  of  central  Asia  are 
strikingly  similar  in  structure  to  the  Tungusian 
languages,  and  also  to  the  Japanese ;  and  in  these 
structural  peculiarities  they  agree  also  with  the 
Finno- Turkic.  On  the  other  hand,  when  we 
study  the  vocabularies,  we  do  not  find  any  simi- 
larity, such  as  to  suggest  a  primitive  identity, 
between  Japanese,  Tungusian,  and  Mongolian 
proper.  We  are  still  further  baffled  when  we 
come  to  Chinese.  The  people  of  Japan  obtained 
their  written  character  from  China,  modifying  it 
to  suit  the  needs  of  their  own  language ;  and  so 
a  Japanese  printed  page  looks  very  like  a  printed 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue?     169 

page  in  Chinese.  If  you  were  just  to  look  at 
these  printed  pages,  you  would  imagine  that  the 
two  languages  are  very  similar,  just  as  a  China- 
man, on  seeing  Hungarian  printed  in  the  Roman 
character,  would  fancy  that  Hungarian  must  be 
similar  to  English  or  Latin.  In  reality  no  kin- 
ship has  yet  been  detected  between  the  languages 
of  China  and  Japan.  Not  only  in  vocabulary 
does  Chinese  differ  from  all  the  other  languages 
spoken  by  the  Mongolian  race,  but  it  even  pre- 
sents a  fundamentally  distinct  type  of  linguistic 
structure.  Age  after  age,  from  the  remotest  antiq- 
uity to  which  historic  or  philologic  inference  can 
guide  us,  the  Chinese  have  talked  with  different 
words  and  after  a  different  grammatical  fashion 
from  their  yellow  neighbours ;  and  these  in  turn 
have  maintained  each  their  distinct  varieties  of 
speech  ;  although  all  these  peoples  —  the  in- 
habitants of  Japan  and  China,  the  Tungusians, 
and  the  Mongols  of  central  Asia  —  are  undoubt- 
edly united  by  physical  bonds  of  descent  from  one 
and  the  same  primeval  yellow  race. 

The  inference  from  this  is  that  there  never  was 
a  primitive  Mongolian  mother-tongue  in  the  sense 
in  which  there  was  a  primitive  Aryan  mother- 
tongue.  The  common  ancestors  of  Japanese, 
Chinese,  Tungusian,  and  Mongol  never  at  any 


170          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

time  lived  together  in  one  great  society,  welded 
into  a  unit  by  community  of  language,  traditions, 
and  customs,  as  was  the  case  with  the  common 
ancestors  of  Roman,  Teuton,  and  Hindu.  On  the 
contrary,  the  aboriginal  yellow  men  must  have 
roamed  about  in  detached  tribes,  like  the  blacks 
of  Australia  or  the  red  men  of  America,  with 
half-formed  languages  fluctuating  from  generation 
to  generation,  diverging  with  great  rapidity,  and 
speedily  losing  all  traces  of  their  origin.  En- 
sconced within  convenient  mountain  barriers,  one 
series  of  these  yellow  tribes  worked  out  its  pecul- 
iar language  and  civilization  in  the  rich  hill- 
country  and  along  the  great  navigable  rivers  of 
China.  A  second  series  of  tribes,  moving  with- 
out reference  to  these,  and  at  a  very  much  later 
date,  formed  a  permanent  community  in  the  isl- 
ands of  Japan.  While  the  remainder  of  the  race 
have  led  a  nomadic  life  down  to  the  present  day; 
now  and  then  engaging  in  combined  activity  for  a 
generation  or  two,  under  the  guidance  of  such  ad- 
venturers as  Attila,  or  Jinghis,  or  Timur,  to  be- 
come for  a  brief  season  the  "  scourge  of  God  "  and 
the  terror  of  mankind,  but  ever,  as  now,  inca- 
pable of  stable  political  union.  With  such  diver, 
gent  careers  as  these,  we  need  not  expect  to  find 
evidence  of  linguistic  community  among  the  dif- 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue?    171 

ferent  branches  of  the  yellow  race.  If  we  find 
one  set  of  linguistic  phenomena  in  China,  and  a 
totally  different  set  in  Japan,  and  yet  another  set 
among  the  barbarous  Mongols  and  Tunguses,  this 
is  no  more  than  we  might  have  expected.  We 
need  not  expect  to  find  such  phenomena  as  the 
coordinate  divergence  of  French  and  Italian  from 
a  common  Latin  mother-tongue,  or  of  Latin  and 
Sanskrit  from  a  common  Aryan  mother-tongue, 
except  where  we  can  find  historical  conditions 
similar  to  those  under  which  these  phenomena 
were  manifested.  Outside  of  that  broad  stream 
of  history  which  includes  the  Aryan  and  Semitic 
worlds  we  do  not  find  such  conditions,  save  in  a 
few  sporadic  cases.  On  the  contrary,  we  find  just 
such  a  state  of  things  as  would  follow  from  the 
isolated  independent  development  of  a  number  of 
languages,  either  without  any  original  kinship,  or 
with  the  original  kinship  blurred  and  destroyed 
almost  from  the  very  beginning. 

The  last  clause  introduces  us  to  a  consideration 
concerning  barbarous  languages  which  is  of  the 
first  importance.  There  is  a  certain  sense  in 
which  we  may  admit  community  of  origin  for 
languages  that  are  now  quite  dissimilar ;  but  the 
sense  is  one  that  is  foreign  to  philological  usage, 
and  has  no  real  philological  significance.  No 


172          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

doubt  all  the  yellow  races  of  Asia  are  descended 
from  some  small  group  of  yellow  progenitors,  and 
no  doubt  this  ancestral  group  possessed  the 
faculty  of  articulate  speech.  Most  likely  the 
group  was  at  the  outset  small  enough  to  use  but 
one  language,  and  as  the  group  increased  in  size 
and  became  subdivided  into  a  number  of  tribes, 
the  common  language  would  soon  get  broken  up 
into  dialects.  So  far  very  good  ;  but  what  we 
have  to  notice  is  that  under  such  circumstances 
the  breaking  up  of  the  common  language  would 
not  in  any  way  resemble  the  breaking  up  of 
Latin  into  the  dialects  of  France  and  Italy.  On 
the  contrary,  the  several  dialects  would  change  so 
rapidly  as  to  lose  their  identity  :  within  a  couple 
of  centuries  it  would  be  impossible  to  detect  any 
resemblance  to  the  language  of  the  primitive 
tribe.  '  The  speech  of  uncivilized  tribes,  when  not 
subject  to  the  powerful  conservative  force  of 
widespread  custom  or  permanent  literary  tradi- 
tion, changes  with  astonishing  rapidity.  Such 
languages  usually  contain  but  a  few  hundred 
words,  and  these  are  often  forgotten  by  the  dozen 
and  replaced  by  new  ones  even  in  the  course  of  a 
single  generation.  Among  many  South  American 
Indians,  as  Azara  tells  us,  the  language  changes 
from  clan  to  clan,  and  almost  from  hut  to  hut,  so 


Was  there  a  Primeval  Mother- Tongue?    173 

that  members  of  different  families  are  obliged  to 
have  recourse  to  gestures  to  eke  out  the  scanty 
pittance  of  oral  discourse  that  is  mutually  intel- 
ligible. In  the  northern  part  of  Celebes,  "  in  a 
district  about  one  hundred  miles  long  by  thirty 
miles  wide,  not  less  than  ten  distinct  languages 
are  spoken."  1  In  civilized  speech  no  words  stick 
like  the  simple  numerals  :  we  use  the  same  words 
to-day,  in  counting  from  one  to  ten,  that  our  an- 
cestors used  in  central  Asia  ages  before  the 
winged  bulls  of  Nineveh  were  sculptured  ;  and 
the  change  in  pronunciation  has  been  barely 
sufficient  to  disguise  the  identity.  But  in  the 
language  of  Tahiti  four  of  the  ten  simple  nu- 
merals used  in  Captain  Cook's  time  have  already 
become  extinct  :  — 

"  Two  was  rua  ;  it  is  now  piti. 

Four  was  ha  ;  it  is  now  maha. 

Five  was  rima  ;  it  is  now  pae. 

Six  was  07io  ;  it  is  now  fene."  2 

Out  of  many  facts  that  might  be  cited,  these 
must  suffice.  The  facility  with  which  savage 
tongues  abandon  old  expressions  for  new  has  no 
parallel  in  civilized  languages,  unless  it  be  in 
some  of  the  more  ephemeral  kinds  of  slang.  It  is  . 

*  Miiller,  Science  of  Language,  6th  ed.  ii.  36. 
2  Op.  cit.  28. 


174          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

sufficiently  clear,  I  think,  that  under  such  cir- 
cumstances a  language  will  seldom  or  never  ac- 
quire sufficient  stability  to  give  rise  to  mutually 
resembling  derivative  dialects.  If  the  habits  of 
primitive  men  were  in  general  similar  to  those  of 
modern  savages,  we  need  not  be  surprised  that 
philologists  are  unable  to  trace  all  existing  lan- 
guages back  to  a  common  origin.  In  order  to  get 
back  to  a  universal  mother-tongue,  it  would  al- 
most seem  requisite  that  the  history  of  mankind 
should  have  begun  with  universal  empire. 

We  shall  conclude,  I  think,  after  a  survey  of 
the  whole  matter,  that  in  speech,  as  in  other  as- 
pects of  social  life,  the  progress  of  mankind  is 
from  fragmentariuess  to  solidarity :  at  the  be- 
ginning, a  multitude  of  feeble,  mutually  hostile 
tribes,  incapable  of  much  combined  action,  with 
hundreds  of  half-formed  dialects,  each  intelligible 
to  a  few  score  of  people  ;  at  the  end,  an  organized 
system  of  mighty  nations,  pacific  in  disposition, 
with  unlimited  reciprocity  of  intercourse,  with 
very  few  languages,  rich  and  precise  in  structure 
and  vocabulary,  and  understood  by  all  men. 

Decanter,  1877. 


VI. 

SOCIOLOGY  AND  HERO-WORSHIP. 

IN  his  interesting  article  entitled  "  Great  Men, 
Great  Thoughts,  and  the  Environment,"  pub- 
lished in  "  The  Atlantic  Monthly  "  for  October, 
1880,  Dr.  William  James  calls  attention  to  the 
striking  analogy  between  "  geniuses  "  and  what 
are  known  to  modern  zoologists  as  "  spontaneous 
variations."  Nothing  could  be  more  satisfactory 
than  the  manner  in  which  (on  pages  444-447) 
Dr.  James  expounds  the  nature  of  this  analogy, 
and  emphasizes  the  truly  philosophic  character  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  method  of  dealing  with  so-called 
spontaneous  variations.  The  analogy  between 
those  variations,  on  the  one  hand,  of  which  the 
zoologist  takes  cognizance,  and  on  the  other  hand 
those  "  sociological  variations "  known  as  gen- 
iuses or  "  great  men,"  consists  essentially  in  the 
similarity  of  causal  relations  in  the  two  cases. 
Both  kinds  of  variations  may  be  described  as  de- 
viations from  an  average  which  are  severally  un- 
accountable. Every  species  of  animals  or  plants 


176  ^Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

consists  of  a  great  number  of  individuals,  which 
are  nearly  but  not  exactly  alike.  Each  individual 
varies  slightly  in  one  characteristic  or  another 
from  a  certain  type  which  expresses  the  average 
among  all  the  individuals  of  the  species.  Thus, 
if  one  inch  be  the  average  length  of  the  proboscis 
of  a  certain  species  of  moth,  it  may  well  be  that 
of  the  million  individuals  which  make  up  the  spe- 
cies the  great  majority  have  the  proboscis  a  little 
shorter  or  a  little  longer  than  an  inch :  in  most 
instances  the  deviation  may  not  exceed  a  hun- 
dredth or  a  thousandth  part  of  an  inch ;  but  there 
may  be  half  a  dozen  individuals  in  the  species 
which  have  the  proboscis  as  long  as  two  inches  or 
as  short  as  half  an  inch.  So,  the  average  height 
of  men  in  the  United  States  may  be  about  five 
feet  and  eight  inches,  very  few  men  being  shorter 
than  five  feet  and  four  inches,  or  taller  than  six 
feet ;  yet  in  the  side-tents  which  accompany  that 
"great  moral  exhibition,"  the  circus,  one  may, 
for  a  quarter  of  a  dollar,  see  giants  eight  feet  in 
height,  or  dwarfs  like  General  Tom  Thumb.  It 
is  just  the  same  with  men's  intellectual  capacities 
as  with  their  physical  dimensions,  though  the  one 
cannot  exactly,  like  the  other,  be  measured  with 
a  foot-rule.  In  every  community  of  men  and 
women  there  is  a  certain  average  standard  of 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  177 

mental  capacity  ;  which,  in  the  ease  of  a  progres- 
sive race  like  ours,  may  be  roughly  described  as 
that  degree  of  ability  to  meet  the  complicated  ex- 
igencies of  civilized  life  which  will  leave  the  next 
generation  somewhat  better  equipped  than  their 
parents  for  meeting  these  exigencies.  Those  men 
whom  we  regard  as  conspicuously  successful  in 
life  —  using  the  term  "successful"  in  no  narrow 
and  mercantile,  but  in  the  broadest  possible  sense 
—  are  the  men,  more  or  less  numerous,  whose 
mental  capacity  rises  somewhat  above  this  aver- 
age standard.  A  like  number  of  men,  through 
various  kinds  and  degrees  of  ill-success,  reveal  a 
mental  capacity  that  is  more  or  less  below  the 
average.  And  along  with  these  numerous  mod- 
erate variations  from  the  common  level  we  meet 
in  every  age  with  a  few  extreme  variations, — 
men  of  giant  intelligence,  such  as  Darwin  or 
Helmholtz,  who  rise  as  far  above  the  average  of 
the  race  as  idiots  and  cretins  sink  below  it. 

Now  the  moth  with  his  proboscis  twice  as  long 
as  the  average,  or  the  man  eight  feet  in  height, 
is  what  we  call  a  spontaneous  variation,  and 
the  Darwin  or  the  Helmholtz  is  what  we  call 
a  "genius;"  and  the  analogy  between  the  two 
kinds  of  deviation  is  obvious  enough.  But  obvi- 
ously, too,  the  individual  which  we  single  out  as  a 
12 


178  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

spontaneous  variation  is  in  no  wise  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  his  fellow-individuals.  If  five  feet 
and  eight  inches  be  the  normal  height  of  a  race 
of  men,  the  man  who  measures  six  feet  is  a  vari- 
ation as  much  as  he  who  measures  eight,  —  only 
the  one  instance  does  not  attract  our  attention, 
and  the  other  does.  In  any  species  whatever,  the 
greater  number  of  individuals  are  no  doubt  va- 
riations, either  in  one  respect  or  in  another. 
Throughout  nature,  where  a  great  number  of 
mutually-balancing  forces  cooperate  to  produce  a 
set  of  results,  we  are  likely  to  find  the  results  dis- 
tributed about  a  certain  average,  very  much  like 
the  shots  at  a  target.  A  little  way  from  the 
centre  there  is  a  spot  where  the  shots  are  thickly 
gathered ;  some  few  have  hit  the  bull's-eye  ;  some 
have  been  caught  away  out  on  the  rim  ;  some 
have  perhaps  flown  by  without  hitting  at  all.  It 
is  just  the  same  with  the  distribution  of  sizes, 
strengths,  forms,  or  any  attributes,  physical  or 
mental,  in  a  species  of  animals,  or  in  a  race  of 
men.  These  things  all  differ,  according  to  the 
general  laws  of  deviation  from  an  average  ;  and 
the  forces  concerned  in  the  result  are  so  hope- 
lessly complicated  —  it  is  so  utterly  beyond  our 
power  to  unravel  them  —  that  this  is  all  we  know 
about  the  matter.  We  cannot  tell  why  a  given 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  179 

moth  has  a  proboscis  exactly  an  inch  and  a  quar- 
ter in  length  any  more  than  we  can  tell  why 
Shakespeare  was  a  great  dramatist. 

I  agree,  therefore,  with  Dr.  James,  that  "  the 
causes  of  production  of  great  men  lie  in  a  sphere 
wholly  inaccessible  to  the  social  philosopher.  He 
must  simply  accept  geniuses  as  data,  just  as  Dar- 
win accepts  his  spontaneous  variations."  The 
problem  of  the  social  philosopher,  undoubtedly, 
so  far  as  he  speculates  about  the  influence  of 
great  men,  is  to  take  them  for  granted,  and  in- 
quire how  far  they  affect  the  environment,  and 
how  far  or  in  what  ways  the  environment  affects 
them.  Dr.  James  goes  on  to  assert,  with  entire 
justice,  that  the  relation  of  the  environment  to 
the  genius  in  sociology  is  strictly  analogous  to  the 
relation  of  the  environment  to  the  variation  in 
biology  :  "  it  chiefly  adopts  or  rejects,  preserves  or 
destroys,  in  short  selects  him."  If  environing 
circumstances  are  such  as  to  render  an  extra  quar- 
ter of  an  inch  of  proboscis  advantageous  to  our 
species  of  moths,  then  the  tendency  will  be  for 
the  variations  in  excess  of  length  of  proboscis  to 
survive  and  leave  offspring,  while  the  variations 
in  the  opposite  direction  are  starved  out  ;  so  that 
by  and  by  the  average  in  the  length  of  proboscis 
will  have  been  shifted  by  a  quarter  of  an  inch. 


180  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

It  may  be  truly  said,  in  a  certain  sense,  that  these 
moths  which  have  varied  in  the  right  direction 
have,  by  being  preserved,  changed  the  character 
of  the  moth  society  to  which  they  belong.  Simi- 
larly with  the  preservation  of  the  great  man,  save 
that,  in  the  immensely  greater  complexity  of  the 
social  problem,  the  effects  are  immeasurably  more 
multifarious.  For  the  great  man,  says  Dr.  James, 
acts  as  a  powerful  ferment,  unlocking  vast  reser- 
voirs of  force  in  various  directions,  and  thus  alters 
the  whole  character  of  his  environment,  very 
much  as  the  introduction  of  a  new  species  may 
alter  the  characters  and  relations  of  the  fauna  and 
flora  throughout  a  whole  neighbourhood.  Dr. 
James  concludes,  then,  that  "  the  mutations  of 
societies  from  generation  to  generation  are  in  the 
main  due  directly  or  indirectly  to  the  acts  or  the 
example  of  individuals  whose  genius  was  so 
adapted  to  the  receptivities  of  the  moment,  or 
whose  accidental  position  of  authority  was  so  crit- 
ical, that  they  became  ferments,  initiators  of 
movement,  setters  of  precedent  or  fashion,  cen- 
tres of  corruption,  or  destroyers  of  other  persons, 
whose  gifts,  had  they  had  free  play,  would  have 
led  society  in  another  direction." 

I  am  careful  to  emphasize  these  conclusions  of 
Dr.  James,  because,  as  far  as  they  go,  they  are 


Sociology  and  Hero-Worship.  181 

my  own,  and,  I  believe,  are  in  general  the  views 
of  that  "Spencerian  or  evolutionist  school"  to- 
ward which  Dr.  James  seems  to  cherish  such  an 
intense  antipathy.  Perhaps  I  may  not  be  quite 
clear  as  to  what  the  Spencerian  "  school "  may 
be.  One  characteristic  of  thinkers  of  such  cali- 
bre as  Mr.  Spencer  is  that  they  do  not  so  much 
found  schools  as  bring  about  a  shifting  of  the  in- 
tellectual stand-point  and  an  enlarging  of  the 
intellectual  horizon  for  the  whole  contemporary 
world.  The  ideas  of  which  Mr.  Spencer  is  the 
greatest  living  exponent  are  to-day  running  like 
the  weft  through  all  the  warp  of  modern  thought, 
and  out  from  their  abundant  suggestiveness  have 
come  the  opinions  of  many  who  do  not  profess  any 
especial  "  allegiance  "  to  Mr.  Spencer,  —  of  many, 
even,  who  are  inclined  to  scoff  at  the  teacher, 
while  all  unconscious  of  the  debt  they  owe  him. 
But  while  I  cannot  undertake  to  make  confident 
assertions  as  to  the  views  of  a  Spencerian  school, 
I  think  I  may  ventui-e  to  speak  with  some  con- 
fidence as  to  the  attitude  of  Mr.  Spencer  himself 
toward  the  present  question. 

So  far  is  Dr.  James  from  realizing  how  closely 
he  has  been  following  in  Mr.  Spencer's  own  line 
of  thought  that  he  begins  his  paper  by  seeking  to 
use  a  certain  alleged  opinion  of  Mr.  Spencer  as  a 


182  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

"  foil "  whereby  to  set  off  and  illustrate  the  truth 
of  his  own  statements.  The  problem  before  us  is, 
"  What  are  the  causes  that  make  communities 
change  from  generation  to  generation, — that 
make  the  England  of  Queen  Anne  so  different 
from  the  England  of  Elizabeth,  the  Harvard 
College  of  to-day  so  different  from  that  of  thirty 
years- ago  ?  "  Dr.  James  replies,  "  The  difference 
is  due  to  the  accumulated  influences  of  individuals, 
of  their  examples,  their  initiatives,  their  decisions." 
Very  good.  When  taken  with  the  proper  quali- 
fication—  which  I  shall  presently  specify  —  there 
is  nothing  in  this  reply  to  which  Mr.  Spencer  need 
offer  an  objection.  But  according  to  Dr.  James 
the  Spencerian  school  holds  that  "the  changes  go 
on  irrespective  of  persons,  and  are  independent  of 
individual  control.  They  are  due  to  the  environ- 
ment, to  the  circumstances,  the  physical  geog- 
raphy, the  ancestral  conditions,  the  increasing 
experience  of  outer  relations  ;  to  everything,  in 
fact,  except  the  Grants  and  the  Bismarcks,  the 
Joneses  and  the  Smiths." 

Now  if  "Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  his  disci- 
ples" really  maintain  any  such  astonishing  prop- 
osition as  this,  it  must  be  difficult  to  acquit  them 
of  the  charge  of  over-hasty  theorizing,  to  say  the 
least ;  if  they  do  not  hold  any  such  view,  it  will 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  183 

be  difficult  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  somebody 
has  been  guilty  of  over-hasty  assertion.  To  ascer- 
tain Mr.  Spencer's  own  opinion,  one  cannot  do 
better  than  to  read  carefully  the  third  chapter 
of  the  little  book  on  the  "  Study  of  Sociology." 
The  subject  of  this  chapter  is  the  "  Nature  of  the 
Social  Science,"  and  the  first  general  conclusion 
arrived  at  is  that  this  science  "has  in  every  case 
for  its  subject-matter  the  growth,  development, 
structure,  and  functions  of  the  social  aggregate, 
as  brought  about  by  the  mutual  actions  of  individu- 
als, whose  natures  are  partly  like  those  of  all  men, 
partly  like  those  of  kindred  races,  partly  distinct- 
ive." After  this  lucid  statement,  which  in  its 
triple  specification  seems  comprehensive  enough 
to  include  the  Grants  and  Bismarcks,  as  well  as 
the  Joneses  and  Smiths,  Mr.  Spencer  goes  on  to 
say,  "  These  phenomena  of  social  evolution  have 
of  course  to  be  explained  with  due  reference  to 
the  conditions  each  society  is  exposed  to,  —  the 
conditions  furnished  by  its  locality,  and  by  its  re- 
lations to  neighbouring  societies.  Noting  this 
merely  to  prevent  possible  misapprehensions,  the 
fact  which  here  concerns  us  is  that  .  .  .  given 
men  having  certain  properties,  and  an  aggregate 
of  such  men  must  have  certain  derivative  proper- 
ties which  form  the  subject-matter  of  a  science." 


184          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

A  deliberate  and  methodical  statement  like  this, 
forming  the  burden  of  half  the  chapter  in  which 
Mr.  Spencer  lays  out  the  ground  for  his  work, 
must  of  course  be  received  as  an  authoritative 
expression  of  his  opinion.  It  will  be  observed 
that  Mr.  Spencer  takes  precisely  the  same  posi- 
tion as  that  which  is  taken  by  Dr.  James  when 
he  says  that  the  changes  which  go  on  in  society 
are  "due  to  the  accumulated  influences  of  indi- 
viduals, of  their  examples,  their  initiatives,  their 
decisions."  So  decidedly  does  Mr.  Spencer  put 
himself  in  this  position  that  it  occurs  to  him  that 
he  may  possibly  be  misinterpreted  as  ignoring  the 
influence  of  environing  conditions,  and  he  there- 
fore adds  the  qualification  that  in  interpreting 
social  changes  we  must  make  "  due  reference  "  to 
the  outward  conditions  to  which  society  is  ex- 
posed. Not  even  Mr.  Spencer's  wide  experience 
of  the  infinite  possibilities  of  misconception  could 
have  led  him  to  suspect  that  in  this  instance  he 
might  be  charged  with  ignoring  the  individual 
Smiths  and  Joneses  of  whom  society  is  composed  ! 

This  due  reference  to  surrounding  conditions  is 
the  qualification  to  which  I  alluded  a  moment 
ago  as  necessary  to  give  completeness  to  Dr. 
James's  statement.  When  we  say  that  the  differ- 
ence between  the  England  of  Queen  Anne  and 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  185 

the  England  of  Queen  Elizabeth  is  due  to  the 
accumulated  influence  of  the  initiatives  and  de- 
cisions of  individuals,  to  what  initiatives  and  de- 
cisions do  we  refer?  Certainly  not  to  the  abortive 
ones ;  not  to  those  initiatives  and  decisions  that 
had  been  promptly  crushed  out  or  held  in  check, 
but  to  those  that  had  been  allowed  to  develop  and 
fructify  in  the  great  events  which  make  up  the 
English  history  of  the  seventeenth  century.  In 
other  words,  we  refer  to  those  individual  initi- 
atives and  decisions  which  had  been  selected  for 
preservation  by  the  aggregate  of  the  conditions  in 
which  English  society  at  that  time  was  placed. 
So  that,  even  in  stating  the  case  as  Dr.  James 
states  it,  we  find  ourselves  unable  to  get  along 
without  tacit  reference  to  the  environment. 

It  is  true  that  in  regarding  the  changes  of  soci- 
ety from  age  to  age  as  due  to  the  cumulative  effect 
of  individual  actions  in  relation  to  environing  con- 
ditions, one  may  nevertheless  deal  with  the  sub- 
ject practically  in  more  than  one  way.  One 
writer  may  turn  his  attention  chiefly  to  the  con- 
sideration of  those  individual  variations  in  opinion 
and  conduct  which,  in  our  ignorance  concerning 
their  complex  modes  of  genesis,  we  call  spon- 
taneous variations.  Another  writer  may  be  more 
deeply  interested  in  pointing  out  such  circum- 


186  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

stances  as  those  of  geographical  position,  of  com- 
mercial intercourse,  of  political  cohesiveness,  by 
which  the  broad  outlines  of  history  have  been 
more  or  less  determined.  The  two  points  of  view 
seem  to  me  complementary  rather  than  opposed 
to  each  other,  though  it  is  a  common  fault  among 
speculative  writers  to  ignore  the  existence  of  all 
the  doors  that  cannot  be  unlocked  with  their 
own  particular  little  key.  Mr.  Bagehot — in  that 
"  golden  little  book  "  which  I  admire  as  much  as 
Dr.  James  does  —  deals  more  especially  with  the 
interior  or  psychical  aspects  of  the  causes  of 
changes  in  society.  Mr.  Grant  Allen,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  deeply  impressed  with  the  manifold  and 
remarkable  ways  in  which  the  histories  of  nations 
have  been  affected  by  their  geographical  position  ; 
though  by  "  geographical  position "  he  means 
something  far  more  considerable  than  that  house- 
hold drudge  of  superficial  writers,  the  climate  :  he 
means  the  entire  situation  of  a  nation,  strategic, 
industrial,  commercial,  and  literary,  in  relation  to 
other  nations.  Mr.  Allen  attaches  so  much  value 
to  considerations  of  this  kind  that  he  is  led  to 
stigmatize  Mr.  Bagehot's  method  as  unscientific 
and  unfruitful  in  good  result.  Mr.  Bagehot,  as  a 
thinker  of  more  catholic  mind,  would  hardly,  I 
believe,  have  been  equally  ready  to  undervalue 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  187 

Mr.  Allen's  work.  As  explanations  after  the  fact 
—  which  are  pretty  much  the  only  kind  of  expla- 
nations we  can  expect  to  have  where  the  concrete 
events  of  history  are  concerned  —  speculations  like 
those  of  Mr.  Allen  are  extremely  interesting  and 
suggestive.  I  agree  in  the  main,  however,  with 
Dr.  James  in  his  views  as  to  the  inadequacy  of 
Mr.  Allen's  method.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that 
"  no  geographical  environment  can  produce  a 
given  type  of  mind ;  it  can  only  foster  and  fur- 
ther certain  types,  .  .  .  and  thwart  and  frustrate 
others."  No  doubt,  too,  Mr.  Allen  makes  a  very 
extravagant  statement  when  he  says  that  "  if  the 
people  who  went  to  Hamburg  had  gone  to  Tim- 
buctoo  they  would  now  be  indistinguishable  from 
the  semi- barbarian  negroes  who  inhabit  that  cen- 
tral African  metropolis ;  and  if  the  people  who 
went  to  Timbuctoo  had  gone  to  Hamburg  they 
•would  now  have  been  white-skinned  merchants 
driving  a  roaring  trade  in  imitation  sherry  and  in- 
digestible port."  In  reading  such  a  statement  as 
this,  one  seems,  indeed,  to  have  fallen  upon  pre- 
Darwiniau  days ;  nay,  more,  one  wonders  whether 
Mr.  Allen  has  ever  studied  as  carefully  as  he 
ought  to  have  done  the  biological  teachings  of 
Mr.  Spencer,  whose  opinions  Dr.  James  quotes 
him  as  representing! 


188  JExc-ursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Mr.  Allen  has  brilliantly  illustrated  several 
points  in  connection  with  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion, more  especially  in  the  department  of  psy- 
chology; but  there  is  no  good  reason  why  he 
should  be  selected  for  quotation  as  the  represen- 
tative of  all  Spencerian  evolutionists,  or  why  all 
Spencerian  evolutionists  should  be  held  respon- 
sible for  Mr.  Allen's  peculiar  opinions.  The  only 
connected  outline  of  Spencerian  sociology  as  yet 
in  existence  (save  what  has  been  published  by 
Mr.  Spencer  himself)  is  that  which  is  contained 
in  the  second  volume  of  my  "  Outlines  of  Cosmic 
Philosophy."  That  the  opinions  therein  expressed 
harmonize  in  the  main  with  Mr.  Spencer's  I  have 
the  strongest  possible  reasons  for  asserting.  Yet 
the  line  of  thought  followed  in  this  part  of  my 
work,  and  especially  in  the  chapter  on  "Condi- 
tions of  Progress,"  is  far  more  closely  parallel 
with  Mr.  Bagehot's  line  of  thought  than  with 
Mr.  Allen's.  Separate  passages  might  be  cited 
to  the  same  effect ;  as,  for  example,  where  it  is 
said  (vol.  ii.  p.  199)  that  the  ecclesiastical  re- 
forms of  Gregory  VII.  have  —  in  their  remote  re- 
sults, of  course  —  had  more  influence  upon  Amer- 
ican history  than  the  direction  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  or  the  position  of  the  Great  Lakes. 
On  the  next  page,  alluding  to  Mr.  Buckle's  theory 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  189 

that  the  difference  in  Arabian  civilization  before 
and  after  the  time  of  Mohammed  was  due  to  the 
difference  between  the  soil  of  Arabia  and  that  of 
Spain,  Persia,  and  India,  I  say,  "  To  exhibit  the 
utter  superficiality  of  this  explanation,  we  have 
only  to  ask  two  questions :  First,  if  the  Arabs 
became  civilized  only  because  they  exchanged 
their  native  deserts  for  Spain,  Persia,  and  India, 
why  did  not  the  same  hold  true  of  the  Turks 
when  they  exchanged  their  barren  steppes  for  the 
rich  empire  of  Constantinople  ?  Though  they 
have  held  for  four  centuries  what  is  perhaps  the 
finest  geographical  position  on  the  earth's  sur- 
face, the  Turks  have  never  directly  aided  the 
progress  of  civilization.  Secondly,  how  was  it 
that  the  Arabs  ever  came  to  leave  their  native 
deserts,  and  to  conquer  the  region  between  the 
Pyrenees  and  the  Ganges  ?  Was  it  because  of  a 
geologic  convulsion  ?  Was  it  because  the  soil,  the 
climate,  the  food,  or  the  general  aspect  of  nature 
had  undergone  any  sudden  change  ?  One  need 
not  be  a  profound  student  of  history  to  see  the 
absurdity  of  such  a  suggestion.  It  was  because 
their  minds  had  been  greatly  wrought  upon  by 
new  ideas ;  because  their  conceptions  of  life,  its 
duties,  its  aims,  its  possibilities,  had  been  revo- 
lutionized by  the  genius  of  Mohammed.  The 


190  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

whole  phenomenon  requires  a  psychological,  not 
a  physical,  explanation."  And  again  (vol.  ii.  p. 
237),  in  speaking  of  Comte,  —  a  writer  whose 
views  of  history  were  sometimes  profound,  though 
his  philosophic  position  was  diametrically  oppo- 
site to  that  of  Mr.  Spencer  and  the  evolutionists, 
—  I  say,  "  He  did  not  fall  into  the  error  that  in- 
dividual genius  and  exertion  are  of  little  or  no 
account  in  modifying  the  course  of  history.  He 
did  not  forget  that  history  is  made  by  individual 
men,  as  much  as  a  coral  reef  is  made  by  indi- 
vidual polyps.  Each  contributes  his  infinitesimal 
share  of  effort ;  nor  is  the  share  of  effort  always  so 
trifling.  Considering  the  course  of  history  merely 
as  the  resultant  of  the  play  of  moral  forces,  is 
there  not  in  a  Julius  Cassar  or  a  Themistokles  as 
large  a  manifestation  of  the  forces  which  go  to 
make  history  as  in  thousands  of  common  men  ?  " 
These  views  of  mine,  as  being  the  opinions  of 
a  "  disciple  "  of  Mr.  Spencer,  may  perhaps  be  set 
off  against  those  which  Dr.  James  quotes  from 
Mr.  Allen.  They  seem  to  me  to  be  quite  in  har- 
mony with  the  whole  spirit  of  Mr.  Spencer's  phi- 
losophy,1 but  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  find, 
anywhere  in  Mr.  Spencer's  writings,  anything 

1  I  have  since  been  assured  by  Mr.  Spencer  that  I  have  throughout 
this  argument  correctly  represented  his  position. 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  191 

that  would  serve  as  a  justification  for  Mr.  Allen's 
extraordinary  statement  about  the  Timbuctoo  ne- 
groes and  the  merchants  of  Hamburg. 

Dr.  James,  however,  does  quote  from  Mr.  Spen- 
cer one  passage  which  seems  to  him  to  ignore  or 
to  underrate  the  importance  of  individual  initi- 
ative as  an  agent  in  the  production  of  social 
changes.  But  when  carefully  considered  in  con- 
nection with  its  context,  this  passage  does  not  ap- 
pear to  be  responsible  for  the  direful  corollaries 
which  Dr.  James  has  deduced  from  it.  Com- 
menting on  the  "great-man  theory"  of  history, 
especially  as  held  by  Carlyle,  Mr.  Spencer  reit- 
erates in  his  peculiar  language  the  familiar  criti- 
cism that  after  all  the  great  man  is  a  "  product  of 
the  age."  "  The  genesis  of  the  great  man,"  says 
he,  "depends  on  the  long  series  of  complex  in- 
fluences which  has  produced  the  race  in  which  he 
appears,  and  the  social  state  into  which  that  race 
has  slowly  grown.  .  .  .  All  those  changes  of  which 
he  is  the  proximate  initiator  have  their  chief 
causes  in  the  generations  he  descended  from/' 
In  saying  this,  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  imply  that 
the  individual  initiative  of  the  great  man  is  of  no 
account;  nor  does  he  imply  that  in  order  to  in- 
terpret the  social  phenomena  of  a  given  epoch  it 
ia  needful  to  seek  for  the  causes  of  the  produc- 


192          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

tion  of  its  great  men  in  that  physiological  sphere 
"  which  is  wholly  inaccessible  to  the  social  phi- 
losopher ; "  nor  does  he  imply  that  it  was  owing 
to  any  **  convergence  of  sociological  pressures  " 
in  the  England  of  1564  that  a  "  W.  Shakespeare, 
with  all  his  mental  peculiarities,"  happened  to  be 
born  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  in  that  year.  In  some 
of  those  omitted  sentences  of  the  passage  cited 
which  Dr.  James  represents  by  dots,  Mr.  Spencer 
indicates  very  clearly  what  he  means.  He  re- 
minds us  that  by  no  possibility  could  a  Newton 
be  born  of  Hottentot  parents,  or  an  Aristotle 
"come  from  a  father  and  mother  with  facial 
angles  of  fifty  degrees;"  and  further  that,  even 
supposing  it  possible  for  a  Watt  to  be  born  in  a 
tribe  unacquainted  with  the  use  of  iron,  his  in- 
ventive genius  would  be  likely  to  effect  but  little. 
Dr.  James  himself  alleges  parallel  truths  :  as  that 
after  a  Voltaire  you  cannot  have  a  Peter  the  Her- 
mit, or  that  under  the  social  conditions  of  the 
tenth  century  a  John  Stuart  Mill  would  have 
been  impossible. 

Now  the  bearing  of  these  considerations  upon 
the  question  which  Mr.  Spencer  is  discussing  is 
obvious.  If  it  be  true  that  a  genius  of  a  given 
kind  can  appear  under  certain  social  conditions, 
and  not  under  others,  as  a  Newton  among  civilized 


Sociology  and  Hero-Worship.  193 

Englishmen,  but  not  among  Hottentots ;  or  if  it  be 
true  that  a  given  genius  can  work  out  its  results 
under  certain  social  conditions,  and  not  under 
others,  as  a  Mill  in  the  nineteenth  century,  but 
not  in  the  tenth ;  then  it  follows  that  in  order  to 
understand  the  course  of  history  from  age  to  age 
the  mere  study  of  the  personal  characteristics  and 
achievements  of  great  men  is  not  sufficient.  Car- 
lyle's  method  of  dealing  with  history,  making  it 
a  mere  series  of  prose  epics,  has  many  merits, 
but  it  is  nevertheless,  from  a  scientific  point  of 
view,  inadequate ;  it  does  not  explain  the  course 
of  events.  History  is  something  more  than  biog- 
raphy. Without  the  least  disrespect  to  the  mem- 
ories of  the  great  statesmen  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
it  may  safely  be  said  that  one  might  learn  all  of 
"  Plutarch's  Lives  "  by  heart,  and  still  have  made 
very  little  progress  toward  comprehending  the 
reasons  why  the  Greek  states  were  never  able  to 
form  a  coherent  political  aggregate,  or  why  the 
establishment  of  despotism  at  Rome  was  involved 
in  the  conquest  of  the  Mediterranean  world. 
The  true  way  to  approach  such  historical  prob- 
lems as  these  is  not  to  speculate  about  the  per- 
sonal characteristics  of  Lysander  or  C.  Gracchus, 
but  to  consider  the  popular  assemblies  of  the 

Greeks  and  Romans  in  their  points  of  likeness 
13 


194          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

and  unlikenesa  to  the  folkmotes  and  parliaments 
of  England  and  the  town-meetings  of  Massachu- 
setts. Since  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury the  revolution  which  has  taken  place  in  the 
study  of  history  is  as  great  and  as  thorough  as 
the  similar  revolution  which,  under  Mr.  Darwin's 
guidance,  has  been  effected  in  the  study  of  bi- 
ology. The  interval  in  knowledge  which  sepa- 
rates a  Freeman  in  1880  from  a  Macaulay  in  1850 
is  as  great  as  the  interval  which  separated  Dalton 
and  Davy  from  the  believers  in  phlogiston.  Yet 
in  the  principal  works  by  which  this  immense 
change  has  been  brought  about  —  such  as  the 
works  of  Maine  and  Stubbs,  Coulanges  and  Mau- 
rer  —  biography  plays  either  an  utterly  subordi- 
nate part  or  no  part  at  all. 

Now  the  passage  on  the  great -man  theory, 
which  Dr.  James  quotes  from  Mr.  Spencer,  is  a 
protest  against  the  alleged  adequacy  of  the 
method  of  Carlyle.  Important  as  the  "  great 
man"  may  be,  it  is  not  his  individual  thoughts 
and  actions  which  primarily  concern  the  sociolo- 
gist. The  truths  with  which  sociology  primarily 
concerns  itself  are  general  truths  relating  to  the 
structure  of  society  and  the  functions  of  its  vari- 
ous parts;  and  they  are  obtained  from  a  com- 
parative and  analytical  survey  of  the  actions  of 


Sociology  and  Hero-Worship.  195 

great  masses  of  men,  considered  on  a  scale  where 
all  matters  of  individual  idiosyncrasy  are  aver- 
aged, and  for  the  purposes  of  the  inquiry  elimi- 
nated. Such  questions  as  relate  to  the  structure 
of  the  family  in  different  stages  of  civilization,  to 
the  relations  of  the  various  classes  of  society  to 
the  governing  body,  to  the  circumstances  which 
hinder  or  favour  the  aggregation  of  tribes  into  na- 
tions, —  it  is  such  problems  as  these  that  mainly 
concern  the  student  of  sociology ;  and  into  such 
problems  biographical  considerations  do  not  enter, 
any  more  than  they  enter  into  the  study  of  politi- 
cal economy.  Political  economy  deals  with  the 
actions  of  men  in  great  masses  in  so  far  solely  as 
the  production  and  distribution  of  wealth  are  con- 
cerned, and  its  conclusions  remain  equally  true, 
no  matter  whether  a  genius  or  a  dunce  presides 
over  the  national  finances.  That  a  protective 
tariff  is  an  indirect  tax  levied  upon  an  entire  com- 
munity, for  the  personal  benefit  of  a  few  mem- 
bers of  the  community,  is  an  economical  truth 
that  is  quite  independent  of  the  particular  finan- 
cial schemes  or  legislative  acts  of  particular  great 
men.  So  —  to  take  one  from  that  class  of  facts 
in  political  history  with  which  the  student  of 
sociology  is  especially  concerned  —  it  is  very  clear 
that  if  a  primary  assembly,  like  the  New  England 


196          JExcursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

town  -  meeting,  is  confiued  within  narrow  geo- 
graphical limits,  so  that  people  can  easily  attend 
to  it,  it  will  be  likely  to  remain  a  folkmote,  or 
primary  assembly  ;  but  if  it  is  spread  over  a  wide 
area,  so  that  people  cannot  conveniently  come  to 
the  meetings,  it  will  tend  either  to  shrink  into  a 
witanagemote,  or  assembly  of  notables,  or  to  de- 
velop into  a  representative  assembly.  This  is  a 
proposition  derived  from  our  general  experience 
of  the  way  in  which  people  behave  under  given 
conditions,  and  confirmed  by  a  wide  historical  in- 
duction. Yet  the  implications  of  this  simple  prop- 
osition, when  once  fully  unfolded,  will  go  farther 
toward  explaining  the  differences  between  Greek 
and  Roman  political  history,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
English  political  history,  on  the  other,  than  would 
the  exhaustive  biography  of  all  the  Greek  and 
Roman,  and  English  statesmen  that  have  ever 
lived,  from  Lykurgos  and  Servius  Tullius  to 
Gladstone.  The  study  of  sociology,  in  short,  is 
primarily  concerned  with  institutions  rather  than 
with  individuals.  The  sociologist  does  not  need 
to  undervalue  in  any  way  the  efficiency  of  individ- 
ual initiative  in  determining  the  concrete  course 
of  history;  but  the  kind  of  propositions  which 
he  seeks  to  establish  are  general  propositions,  re- 
lating to  the  way  in  which  masses  of  men  act 
under  given  conditions. 


Sociology  and  Hero-Worship.  197 

Here,  in  conclusion,  we  may  call  attention  to  a 
broad  distinction  between  the  study  of  sociology 
and  the  study  of  history,  which,  when  duly  con- 
sidered, will  throw  much  light  upon  the  points 
in  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine  by  which  Dr.  James 
seems  to  have  been  puzzled.  The  distinction  to 
which  I  allude  is  one  which  may  be  most  fitly 
illustrated  by  a  reference  to  the  study  of  geology. 
The  philosophical  geologist  assumes  as  data  the 
various  physical  and  chemical  properties  of  the 
substances  of  which  the  earth's  surface  is  com- 
posed, and  by  reasoning  from  these  data,  with  the 
aid  of  all  the  concrete  facts  which  observation 
can  gather,  he  constructs  his  theory  of  the  actual 
changes  which  the  earth's  surface  has  undergone, 
or  will  undergo,  under  given  conditions.  In  so 
far  as  his  knowledge  of  the  physical  and  chemical 
properties  of  matter  is  exhaustive,  and  in  so  far 
as  his  judgment  is  sound,  his  conclusions  with  re- 
gard to  the  general  course  of  geological  events 
will  be  correct.  He  can  even  foretell,  in  outline, 
what  kind  of  effects  will  be  likely  to  be  produced 
by  a  given  set  of  geological  causes.  But  when  it 
comes  to  predicting,  with  minute  and  exhaustive 
accuracy,  the  geological  future  of  any  particular 
spot  on  the  earth's  surface,  he  is  foiled,  through 
inability  to  compass  all  the  conditions  of  the 


198          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

concrete  case.  And  likewise,  if  he  is  asked  to 
give  the  precise  physical  history  of  any  particular 
spot  on  the  earth,  his  conclusions,  though  sound 
in  principle,  may  be  inadequate,  because  he  may 
not  have  gained  control  of  all  the  special  facts 
required  for  this  individual  case.  So,  although 
geology  is  unquestionably  a  legitimate  science,  it 
is  nevertheless  a  science  which  must  deal  chiefly 
with  explanations  after  the  fact ;  it  can  seldom 
or  never  be  possible  for  the  geologist  to  lay  down 
general  principles  which  will  be  sure  to  fit  every 
case  that  may  arise. 

Just  so  with  sociology.  The  philosophical  stu- 
dent of  sociology  assumes  as  data  the  general  and 
undisputed  facts  of  human  nature,  and  with  the 
aid  of  all  such  concrete  facts  as  he  can  get  from 
history  he  constructs  his  theory  of  the  general 
course  of  social  evolution,  —  of  the  changes  which 
societies  have  undergone,  or  will  undergo,  under 
given  conditions.  If  his  work  has  been  properly 
done,  he  can  go  so  far  as  to  foretell  what  kind  of 
result  is  likely  to  be  produced  by  a  given  course 
of  political  action.  But  when  it  comes  to  pre- 
dicting the  future  of  any  particular  society  for 
the  next  ten  years,  he  is  sure  to  be  foiled,  through 
inability  to  take  in  the  infinitely  complex  condi- 
tions of  the  concrete  case.  And  in  like  manner, 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  199 

when  he  is  called  upon  to  interpret  the  past  his- 
tory of  society,  he  cannot  expect  to  do  more  than 
to  render  explanations  after  the  fact.  In  order  to 
gain  control,  moreover,  of  all  the  special  facts  re- 
quired for  the  interpretation  of  each  particular 
case,  he  must  take  into  account  the  personal 
idiosyncrasies  of  the  great  men  by  whom  the  con- 
crete course  of  history  has  been  determined.  For 
example,  given  the  political  constitution  of  Rome 
in  the  third  century  before  Christ,  and  the  trans- 
formation of  that  constitution  into  an  imperial 
despotism  can  be  shown  to  have  been  an  inevit- 
able consequence  of  the  conquest  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  surrounding  nations  by  a  society  so  con- 
stituted. It  was  a  consequence  which  not  even 
the  practical  genius  of  Caesar  —  the  greatest,  no 
doubt,  that  has  ever  been  seen  on  the  earth  — 
could  have  possibly  averted,  had  all  its  unrivalled 
power  been  thrown  in  that  direction.  But  grant- 
ing that  this  general  course  of  development  was 
inevitable,  the  future  course  of  European  history 
was  certainly  very  different,  as  initiated  by 
Cassar,  from  what  it  would  have  been  if  initiated 
by  Sulla  or  Pompeius.  When  once  this  distinc- 
tion between  the  stand -point  of  the  sociologist 
and  the  stand-point  of  the  historian  is  thoroughly 
grasped,  one  can  find  no  difficulty  in  comprehend- 


200  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ing  Mr.  Spencer's  attitude  toward  the  great-man 
theory.  IE  the  purpose  of  the  sociologist  were  to 
construct  concrete  history  from  an  a  priori  point 
of  view,  then  he  would  undoubtedly  need  to  in- 
quire into  the  mode  of  genesis  of  each  individual 
genius,  and  to  take  every  one  of  its  peculiarities 
into  the  account.  No  such  science  as  this  is  pos* 
sible  to-day,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  any  such 
science  will  ever  be  possible ;  nothing  short  of 
omniscience  could  compass  its  problems.  As  it  is, 
the  task  of  tho  sociologist  is  confined  to  the  ascer- 
tainment of  truths  relating  to  the  actions  of  men 
in  aggregates.  It  is  for  the  historian  to  make  use 
of  such  general  truths  in  interpreting  the  actions 
of  particular  men ;  and  it  is  the  greater  extent  to 
which  recent  historians  have  been  able  to  employ 
sociological  generalization  that  is  making  the  his- 
torical writing  of  to-day  so  much  more  satisfac- 
tory and  profound  than  the  historical  writing  of  a 
generation  ago.  This  increased  use  of  sociology, 
this  more  frequent  and  conscious  reference  to  the 
"  conditions,"  the  "  environment,"  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing,  does  not  make  the  modern  historian 
less  mindful  of  the  reverence  due  to  great  men. 
On  the  contrary,  it  enhances  his  appreciation  of 
them  through  his  more  profound  knowledge  of 
the  conditions  under  which  they  have  worked. 


Sociology  and  Hero- Worship.  201 

As  an  example  I  may  refer  to  the  way  in  which 
the  life  of  Caesar  has  been  treated  respectively  by 
Fronde  and  by  Mommsen.  To  both  these  writers 
Caesar  is  the  greatest  hero  that  has  ever  lived, 
and  both  do  their  best  to  illustrate  his  career. 
Both,  too,  have  done  their  work  well.  But  Mr. 
Froude  has  profited  very  little  by  the  modern 
scientific  study  of  social  phenomena,  and  his 
method  is  in  the  main  the  method  of  Carlyle. 
Mommsen,  on  the  other  hand,  is  saturated  in 
every  fibre  with  "  science,"  with  "  sociology," 
with  the  "  comparative  method,"  with  the  "study 
of  institutions."  As  a  result  of  this  difference, 
we  find  that  Mr.  Froude  quite  fails  to  do  justice 
to  the  very  greatest  part  of  all  Caesar's  work, 
namely,  the  reconstructive  measures  of  the  last 
years  of  his  life,  which  Mommsen  has  so  ad- 
mirably characterized  in  his  profound  chapter  on 
the  Old  Republic  and  the  New  Monarchy.  Or, 
if  still  more  striking  proof  be  needed  that  the 
scientific  study  of  the  evolution  of  society  is  not 
incompatible  with  the  highest  possible  estimate 
of  the  value  of  individual  initiative,  I  may  cite 
the  illustrious  example  of  Mr.  Freeman.  Of  all 
the  historians  now  living,  Mr.  Freeman  is  the 
most  thoroughly  filled  with  the  scientific  spirit, 
and  he  has  done  more  than  any  other  to  raise  the 


202          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

study  of  history  on  to  a  higher  level  than  it  has 
ever  before  occupied.  His  writings  in  great  part 
read  like  an  elaborate  commentary  on  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  —  a  commentary  the  more 
valuable,  in  one  sense,  in  that  Mr.  Freeman  owns 
no  especial  allegiance  to  Mr.  Spencer  or  to  any 
general  evolutionary  philosophy.  Yet  this  great 
historian,  whose  opinions  are  determined  every- 
where by  the  sociological  study  of  institutions, 
turns  out  to  be  at  the  same  time  as  ardent  a 
hero- worshipper  as  Carlyle  himself,  —  and  vastly 
more  intelligent. 
October,  1880. 


VII. 

HEROES  OF  INDUSTRY.! 

LAST  of  all,  in  our  gallery  of  heroes,  come 
the  heroes  of  industrial  civilization,  —  the  bold 
explorers  who  have  enlarged  the  area  of  the  civil- 
ized world,  and  the  men  who  by  inventive  genius 
have  added  to  the  number  and  complexity  of  the 
processes  whereby  human  wants  are  satisfied.  In 
one  sense  it  was  doubtless  well  to  place  this  group 
of  heroes  last ;  for,  while  the  groups  of  greatest 
poets  and  founders  of  religions  carry  us  back  into 
an  almost  mythical  antiquity ;  and  while  art,  phi- 
losophy, history,  science,  and  politics  have  each 
and  all  of  them  their  illustrious  representatives 
in  ancient  as  well  as  in  modern  times ;  on  the 
other  hand,  we  find  that  all  the  discoverers  and 
inventors  who  have  been  thought  worthy  to  be 

1  Preface  to  the  eighth  volume  of  The  Hundred  Greatest  Men ; 
Portraits  reproduced  from  Fine  and  Rare  Engravings,  London,  1880. 
8vols.  4to.  The  eighth  volume  contains  "Inventors  and  Discoverers." 

I  reprint  this  "  preface  "  in  this  connection,  because  it  affords  a  good 
illustration  of  some  of  the  points  in  the  preceding  essay  on  Sociology 
and  Hero- Worship. 


204          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

included  among  the  hundred  greatest  men  of  hia- 
tory  belong  to  modern  times.  Nor  is  this  curious 
circumstance  merely  an  accident ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  affords  an  apt  illustration  of  one  of  the  most 
striking  and  important  of  all  the  general  aspects 
of  the  history  of  civilization.  It  is  not  true  that 
industrial  art  is  later  in  its  beginnings  than  the 
arts  of  warfare  and  statesmanship,  or  than  the  in- 
clination toward  scientific  inquiry.  In  their  most 
rudimentary  beginnings  all  these  things  were,  no 
doubt,  nearly  simultaneous  with  each  other,  as 
well  as  with  art,  religion,  and  poetry.  Pre-gla- 
cial  men  scratched  outline  pictures  of  reindeer  on 
their  crude  stone  hammers  ;  the  first  man  who  ex- 
plained an  eclipse  as  the  swallowing  of  the  sun 
by  a  dragon*  propounded  an  hypothesis  of  the 
kind  by  which  the  beginnings  of  science  and  of 
theology  are  alike  characterized ;  and  poetry  and 
music  had  tlieir  humble  origin  in  tales  about  the 
dead  hero,  and  rhythmical  chants  and  dances  in 
propitiation  of  his  ghost.  And  in  like  manner 
the  ingenious  savage  of  primeval  times  who  first 
discovered  that  it  was  easier  and  safer  to  float 
across  a  river  on  a  log,  if  you  hollowed  out  the 
log,  was  the  legitimate  precursor  of  Fulton  and 
Ericsson.  But  the  names  of  the  clever  men  who 
invented  canoes  and  bows  and  arrows  are  as  ut> 


Heroes  of  Industry.  205 

terly  unknown  to  tradition  as  the  names  of  the 
earliest  myth-makers,  or  of  those  pre-Homeric 
heroes  who  won  for  the  Aryan  people  the  rich 
heritage  of  the  southern  peninsulas  of  Europe.  It 
was  only  after  civilization  had  already  made  con- 
siderable progress,  after  tribes  of  men  had  become 
united  into  large  and  stable  political  aggregates, 
and  after  the  business  of  society  had  acquired  a 
rather  high  degree  of  complexity,  that  individual 
men  could  achieve  work  of  any  sort  on  a  suffi- 
ciently grand  scale  to  arrest  the  attention  of  suc- 
ceeding generations  through  thousands  of  years. 
Granting  that  some  pre-Homeric  hero  may  have 
had  the  native  powers  of  a  Hannibal,  the  fact 
that  his  achievements  did  not  visibly  affect  great 
masses  of  society,  but  only  the  movements  of  a 
few  petty  tribes,  would  be  enough  to  prevent  his 
fame  surviving,  save,  perhaps,  in  some  vague 
half-intelligible  legends  about  giants  and  demi- 
gods. But  after  the  historical  period,  in  the  long 
career  of  nascent  humanity,  had  fairly  begun  — 
after  great  societies  had  been  formed,  with  gen- 
erals and  statesmen,  poets  and  artists,  and  even 
philosophers  —  a  long  time  had  still  to  elapse  be- 
fore anything  was  heard  of  inventors  of  giant 
calibre  and  wonderful  achievements  like  Ark- 
wright  and  Watt.  And  thia  fact  has  in  history  a 
marked  significance. 


206          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Before  inventors  of  this  sort  were  possible,  it 
was  necessary,  in  the  first  place,  that  society 
should  have  reached  a  state  of  comparative  sta- 
bility politically.  The  ages  which  witnessed  the 
exploits  of  a  Belisarius,  a  Pepin,  or  a  Godfrey  de 
Bouillon,  were  ages  in  which  neither  a  Columbus 
nor  a  Gutenberg  was  possible.  Amid  such  chronic 
political  turmoil,  there  was  no  surplus  energy 
which  could  be  devoted  to  the  exploration  and 
colonization  of  remote  countries,  nor  was  there 
enough  security  for  industry  at  home  to  permit 
the  adoption  of  new  devices  for  facilitating  indus- 
trial processes.  In  the  second  place,  it  was  nec- 
essary both  that  commercial  operations  should 
have  begun  to  cover  a  wide  geographical  range, 
and  that  the  physical  sciences  should  have  made 
considerable  progress.  The  application  of  both 
these  considerations  to  the  case  of  a  discoverer 
like  Columbus  is  obvious  enough  ;  but  both  are 
equally  applicable  to  the  case  of  such  an  inventor 
as  Arkwright.  Supposing  that  such  a  man  could 
have  been  produced,  and  could  have  invented  his 
spinning  machine  in  the  age  of  Augustus  or  of 
Trajan,  no  such  results  would  have  followed  as 
were  brought  about  a  hundred  years  ago  in  Eng- 
land. The  general  knowledge  of  machinery  was 
insufficient,  and  the  general  extension  of  com- 


Heroes  of  Industry.  207 

merce  was  also  insufficient.  And  so  it  follows,  in 
the  third  place,  that  when  men  of  the  intellectual 
calibre  of  Watt  and  Arkwright  were  born  in  such 
a  state  of  society  as  that  of  ancient  Rome,  their 
attention  was  turned  to  other  things,  and  not  to 
the  mechanical  arts ;  they  became  statesmen  or 
lawyers,  poets  or  philosophers,  but  not  inventors 
on  a  grand  scale.  There  was  no  lack  of  inven- 
tive talent  on  the  part  of  the  ancients,  especially 
as  applied  to  processes  of  warfare,  as  was  illus- 
trated by  the  skilful  devices  with  which  the  Ro- 
mans, in  the  first  Punic  war,  wrought  such  whole- 
sale destruction  on  the  Carthaginian  fleets.  But 
the  men  who  devised  these  remarkable  engines, 
though  they  effected  an  important  temporary  pur-  ' 
pose,  accomplished  nothing  toward  extending  per- 
manently the  control  of  mankind  over  the  forces 
of  nature,  or  toward  modifying  the  career  of  in- 
dustry ;  and  so  they  are  not  remembered  among 
the  great  inventors.  The  explanation  of  the  non- 
appearance  of  Watts  and  Arkwrights  in  ancient 
times  is  not  to  be  found,  therefore,  in  any  assumed 
lack  of  inventive  talent,  but  in  the  social  condi- 
tions which  prevailed  in  antiquity  and  down  to 
the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

But  there  is  a  still  more  striking  historic  sig- 
nificance in  the  relatively  late  appearance  of  the 


208          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

heroes  of  industry.  The  paucity  of  inventors  in 
antiquity,  and  their  increasing  frequency  in  mod- 
ern times,  serves  as  the  index  of  a  great  change 
that  has  been  slowly  taking  place  in  the  prevail- 
ing character  of  human  activity.  Whereas  the 
basis  of  civilization  was  once  mainly  military,  it 
has  now  become  mainly  industrial.  Whereas  the 
occupation  of  the  greater  part  of  mankind  was 
once  fighting  and  pillage,  it  is  now  the  peaceful 
cultivation  of  the  earth  and  the  transformation 
of  the  earth's  various  productions  into  endlessly 
complex  instruments  for  satisfying  human  wants, 
both  physical  and  aesthetic.  Warfare  has  long 
been  necessary  for  the  purpose  of  securing  and 
maintaining  the  political  stability  of  great  masses 
of  men,  without  which  industry  itself  could  not 
attain  to  any  high  development.  From  this  point 
of  view,  warfare  has  not  yet  ceased  to  be  neces- 
sary, especially  where  civilized  societies  are  mo- 
lested or  threatened  by  barbarous  societies,  and 
no  doubt  it  will  be  a  long  time  before  warfare  be- 
comes extinct ;  but,  in  spite  of  this,  the  sphere  of 
warfare  in  modern  life  has  become  very  much  re- 
stricted. In  such  countries  as  England  and  the 
United  States,  it  takes  up  the  time  and  attention 
of  only  a  very  small  part  of  the  community,  and 
only  at  considerable  intervals  acts  as  a  real  dis- 


Heroes  of  Industry.  209 

turbance  to  the  prevailing  occupations,  which  are 
almost  entirely  concerned,  directly  or  indirectly, 
with  industry.  The  enormous  complication  of 
modern  society,  which  has  been  mainly  brought 
about  by  the  labours  of  industrial  discoverers  and 
inventors,  in  cooperation  with  scientific  inquirers, 
has  brought  things  to  such  a  pass  that  men  are 
more  and  more  unwilling  to  engage  in  warfare. 
The  disturbance  which  it  works,  though  slight 
compared  with  the  chronic  misery  which  it  in- 
flicted in  earlier  times,  is  now  beginning  to  be 
regarded  as  unendurable.  And  along  with  the 
diminution  of  the  quantity  of  warfare,  and  the 
restriction  of  its  sphere,  there  has  gone  on  a  grad- 
ual alteration  in  the  feelings  and  in  the  manners 
of  civilized  men.  This  change  has  been  shown  in 
increased  regard  for  domestic  comfort,  in  the  ab- 
olition of  judicial  torture  and  of  cruel  modes  of 
punishment,  in  prison  reforms,  and  generally  in 
increased  softness  of  temper  and  mildness  of  man- 
ner. That  this  change  is  due  to  the  general  sub- 
stitution of  industrial  for  military  activity,  is  too 
obvious  to  require  detailed  argument ;  yet,  when 
duly  considered  in  all  its  bearings,  the  connection 
of  this  change  with  human  happiness  will  be 
found  to  be  so  close  that,  even  had  nothing  else 
been  accomplished  by  the  inauguration  of  the  in- 

14 


210          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

dustrial  era,  we  should  still  have  ample  ground 
for  regarding  the  great  discoverers  and  inven- 
tors as  among  the  chief  benefactors  of  mankind. 
Though  last  in  order,  we  can  in  no  wise  rank 
them  as  least  in  noble  desert. 
November,  1880. 


vni. 

THE  CAUSES  OF  PERSECUTION. 

IN  the  first  series  of  his  admirable  essays  on 
contemporary  literature,  M.  Scherer  reminds  us 
that  in  1841  Lacordaire  wrote  a  biography  of 
Saint  Dominic,  in  order  to  prove  that  he  was  not 
the  founder  of  the  Inquisition.  "  Strange  are  the 
vicissitudes  of  opinion,"  observes  the  critic.  "The 
Bollandists  saw  a  title  of  honour  where  the  mod- 
ern Dominican  sees  a  blemish  which  he  would  fain 
wipe  away.  While  the  former  scornfully  asked 
what  there  can  be  criminal  or  shameful  in  deliver- 
ing heretics  to  the  torture,  Lacordaire  complains 
of  the  calumnies  which  have  injured,  in  the  eyes 
of  posterity,  the  reputation  of  the  chief  of  his 
order."  J  The  case  is  indeed  a  striking  one  ;  but 
the  vicissitudes  of  opinion  which  it  illustrates  are 
in  no  way  temporary  or  accidental,  but  are  symp- 
tomatic of  a  general  and  progressive  change  in  the 
tempers  and  opinions  of  civilized  men.  The  inter- 
val of  a  century  or  more  between  the  earlier  Bol= 

1  Etudes  sur  la  litterature  contemporaine,  i.  159. 


212          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

landists  and  Lacordaire  marked  a  new  era  in  this 
change  of  temper,  in  so  far  as  persecution,  while 
losing  much  of  its  old  cruel  intensity,  became  also 
discredited  and  disavowed.  It  was  during  this 
interval  that  Lessing's  theory  of  the  relative  truth 
of  opinions,  which  destroyed  the  logical  basis  of 
persecution,  began  to  make  its  way  among  culti- 
vated minds.  Though  the  persecuting  spirit  has 
not  yet  ceased  to  influence  men's  actions,  it  is  no 
longer  regarded  as  a  trait  to  be  proud  of,  but  seeks 
to  hide  itself  under  specious  disguises.  Its  mani- 
festations, too,  have  become  correspondingly  fee- 
ble. The  heretic  who  once  would  have  been 
racked,  thumb-screwed,  and  burned  for  writing  an 
obnoxious  life  of  Jesus  is  now  only  requested  to 
resign  his  professorship  in  the  College  de  France, 
while  nobody  thinks  of  such  a  thing  as  confiscat- 
ing the  book  or  cutting  off  from  the  author  his 
share  of  the  proceeds  of  its  immense  sale.  The 
decline  of  persecution  is  in  these  respects  anal- 
ogous to  the  simultaneous  decline  in  the  warlike 
spirit.  Warfare,  once  regarded  as  the  only  fitting 
occupation  for  well-bred  men,  has  come  to  be  re- 
garded not  only  as  an  intolerable  nuisance,  but 
even  as  a  criminal  business,  save  when  justified 
on  the  ground  of  self-defence.  And  along  with 
this  change  in  the  moral  estimate  of  warfare,  we 


Ttie  Causes  of  Persecution.  213 

observe  that  whereas  the  capture  of  a  town  not 
long  ago  was  invariably  followed  by  a  carnival 
of  red-handed  slaughter  and  bestial  lust,  it  is  now 
thought  unfair  to  kill  the  pigs  or  chickens  of  a 
non-combatant  enemy  without  at  least  professing 
to  pay  for  them.  These  phenomena  are  happy 
symptoms  of  a  general  improvement  in  the  way 
men  think  and  feel ;  and  they  give  one  some  rea- 
son for  hoping  that  in  due  course  of  time  such 
ugly  things  as  war  and  persecution  will  cease  to 
be  numbered  among  the  actual  difficulties  which 
beset  human  life. 

This  general  improvement  in  opinion  and  tem- 
per, when  stated  with  proper  limitations  as  to 
time  and  place,  is  admitted  by  every  one  ;  and  it 
has  become  an  interesting  task  to  analyze  it  and 
determine  the  various  circumstances  to  which  it  is 
due.  How  does  it  happen  that  while  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  current  orthodoxy  would  once 
have  roasted  you  with  pious  exultation,  they  are 
now  fain  to  content  themselves  with  turning  you 
out  of  an  office,  and  with  an  apologetic  air  at  that? 

This  question  was  incidentally  treated  by  the 
late  Mr.  Buckle,  in  the  book  which,  twenty  years 
ago,  was  so  stimulating  to  many  youthful  minds. 
Mr.  Buckle  laid  it  down  as  one  of  the  cardinal 
points  of  his  theory  of  history  that  civilized  men 


214  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

have  not  improved  morally  but  only  intellectually. 
That  on  the  whole  civilized  men  manage  to  live 
in  a  more  peaceable  and  becoming  manner  than 
barbarians,  he  did  not  deny  ;  but  ho  thought  it 
necessary  for  the  general  purposes  of  his  theory  to 
maintain  that  this  progress  has  been  due  entirely 
to  increase  in  knowledge,  and  not  at  all  to  im- 
provement in  ethical  feeling.  His  principal  argu- 
ment in  support  of  this  thesis  is  taken  from  the 
history  of  persecution.  He  calls  attention  to  the 
curious  circumstance  that,  in  the  early  struggle 
between  Christianity  and  Paganism,  it  was  not 
the  infamous  Commodus  and  Elagabalus,  but  the 
pure  and  upright  Marcus  and  Julian  who  perse- 
cuted the  new  religion.  And  so,  in  modern  times, 
many  of  the  extremest  bigots  have  been  distin- 
guished for  integrity  of  character  and  elevation 
of  purpose,  —  as  St.  Dominic,  Isabella  of  Castile, 
Carlo  Borromeo,  Calvin,  and  Caraffa.  Mr.  Buckle 
accordingly  argues  that  religious  persecution  has 
been  the  product  of  some  of  the  best  impulses 
of  human  nature  when  guided  by  an  erroneous 
theory  of  duty.  The  wretched  Commodus  cared 
nothing  for  religion  or  for  anything  else  save  his 
sensual  pleasures  ;  and  so  Christian  and  Pagan 
were  all  one  to  him.  But  his  noble  father,  Mar- 
cus, had  the  interests  of  religion  uppermost  in  his 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  215 

heart ;  and  so,  in  spite  of  his  humane  disposition, 
he  felt  it  necessary  to  use  violent  means  in  put- 
ting down  such  an  aggressive  heresy  as  Chris- 
tianity was  then  regarded.  So,  in  later  times, 
when  persecution  was  prevalent  among  Christian 
sects,  the  general  rule  was  that  those  who  believed 
in  the  dogma  of  exclusive  salvation  were  perse- 
cutors, no  matter  to  what  sect  they  belonged.  Of 
this  belief,  persecution  is,  no  doubt,  under  any 
circumstances,  the  natural  outcome.  He  who  be- 
lieves that  his  neighbor's  heresy  is  destined  to  be 
punished  after  death  by  excruciating  tortures  of 
infinite  duration,  will  not  scruple  to  use  the  most 
violent  means  for  rescuing  him  from  his  perilous 
condition.  Obviously,  such  a  conclusion  may  be 
entertained  without  sophistry.  Once  admit  that 
salvation  is  possible  only  within  the  limits  of  your 
own  sect,  and  it  may  well  be  argued  that  you  are 
bound,  in  benevolence  if  not  in  justice,  to  compel 
all  dissenters  to  "  enter  in  "  to  that  sect.  If  perse- 
cution be  needful  to  obtain  such  an  object,  then, 
on  this  view  of  the  case,  it  would  really  be  hard- 
hearted to  refrain  from  using  it.  If  pulleys  and 
thumb-screws  can  substitute  eternal  happiness  for 
future  torments  like  those  described  by  Dante, 
then  pulleys  and  thumb-screws  are  instruments  of 
charity  and  kindness.  On  this  view  of  the  case, 


210          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

the  typical  religious  persecutor  is  a  man  in  whom 
unselfish  philanthropy  has  become  such  an  un- 
controllable impulse  that,  no  matter  how  great  the 
violence  to  his  natural  feelings  of  humanity,  he 
will  not  hesitate  to  employ  the  most  rigorous  and 
appalling  measures  to  restrain  his  fellow-creatures 
from  incurring  the  risk  of  endless  misery.  Such 
men  exist  to-day,  as  formerly,  mankind  having 
remained  substantially  unchanged  in  their  moral 
condition.  But  they  no  longer  use  such  rigorous 
and  appalling  means  of  constraining  the  opinions 
of  their  fellow-creatures,  because  —  for  one  thing 
—  they  have  not  the  power  to  do  so.  And  they 
have  lost  the  power  to  do  so,  because  such  a  gen- 
eral scepticism  has  come  to  pervade  the  commu- 
nity that  the  dogma  of  exclusive  salvation  has 
become  discredited.  The  decline  of  persecution 
has  therefore  —  according  to  Mr.  Buckle  —  been 
determined  solely  by  intellectual  causes,  and  does 
not  indicate  any  improvement  in  the  average  char- 
acter or  advance  in  the  ethical  knowledge  of  man- 
kind. 

In  this  view  there  is  some  truth,  but  it  is  so 
mixed  up  with  error  that  the  total  statement  is  of 
little  worth.  That  the  growth  of  scepticism,  or 
increasing  lack  of  certainty  about  transcendental 
opinions,  has  had  much  to  do  with  diminishing 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  217 

religious  persecution,  is  not  to  be  denied.  But 
that  the  average  persecutor  is  a  man  whose  horrid 
actions  are  dictated  by  an  unselfish  interest  in  the 
welfare  of  his  fellow-men,  is  a  much  more  ques- 
tionable proposition.  It  has  not  been  customary 
to  credit  religious  bigotry  with  such  lofty  mo- 
tives, —  if  motives  prompting  such  atrocious  ac- 
tions can  at  all  properly  be  called  lofty,  —  and 
we  do  not  find  Mr.  Buckle  disposed  to  be  par- 
ticularly lenient  in  his  judgment  of  individual 
persecutors,  whatever  general  statements  the  sup- 
posed exigencies  of  his  theory  may  have  led  him 
to  make.  When  he  comes  to  treat  of  the  bigoted 
Scotch  divines  of  the  seventeenth  century,  he  is 
only  too  ready  to  charge  them  with  moral  per- 
versity as  well  as  with  intellectual  ignorance  and 
obtuseness.  This  is  very  inconsistent ;  but  in- 
consistency can  hardly  be  avoided  when  one  starts 
with  such  a  singularly  half-true  theory  as  that 
which  Mr.  Buckle  propounded. 

Mr.  Buckle's  fundamental  error  lay  in  the  at- 
tempt to  assign  distinct  parts  to  elements  of  hu- 
man nature  that  in  reality  cannot  be  separated. 
For  didactic  or  school-room  purposes  it  is  well 
enough  to  consider  separately  the  intellectual  and 
moral  faculties  of  man.  But  when  we  come  to 
examine  concretely  any  actual  group  of  human 


218  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

phenomena,  it  is  hopelessly  futile  to  try  to  con- 
sider intelligence  and  moral  disposition  as  work- 
ing separately,  or  to  assign  to  each  its  kind  and 
amount  of  effects.  In  point  of  fact  they  never 
do  work  separately,  but  their  combinations  are  so 
manifold  and  intricate  that  the  disentangling  of 
effects  becomes  impossible.  When  we  look  at 
things  rather  than  words,  we  see  that  every 
complex  question  of  morals  is  largely  also  a  ques- 
tion of  intelligence,  and  conversely.  For  ex- 
ample, let  us  consider  what  political  economists 
call  the  "  effective  desire  of  accumulation."  As  a 
rule  all  men  desire  to  make  money,  or  to  increase 
their  general  control  over  the  circumstances  which 
make  life  comfortable  or  pleasurable;  but  the 
effectiveness  of  this  desire  is  very  different  with 
different  individuals,  and  it  is  immeasurably  more 
effective  in  the  case  of  civilized  men  than  in  the 
case  of  barbarians.  The  savage  cannot  be  made 
to  work  to-day  in  anticipation  of  wants  that  are 
not  actually  felt  at  present ;  but  the  civilized  man 
will  even  devote  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  dol- 
lars' worth  of  labour  every  year  to  ward  off  the 
mere  possibility  of  a  loss  by  fire  which  is  by  no 
means  likely  to  occur.  This  tendency  to  provide 
for  future  contingencies  is  at  the  root  of  what  is 
called  the  "  effective  desire  of  accumulation,"  and 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  219 

it  furnishes  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  of  all  the 
distinctions  between  civilized  men  and  savages. 
The  progress  of  mankind  in  civilization  has  been 
to  a  large  extent  identical  with  the  growth  of  this 
tendency.  But,  now,  how  far  has  this  been  an  in- 
tellectual, and  how  far  a  moral  progress  ?  On  the 
one  hand,  it  may  be  argued  that  the  ability  to 
labour  and  to  economize  to-day  in  anticipation  of 
future  contingencies  is  an  index  of  self-control  or 
of  power  to  resist  momentary  temptations;  and 
in  so  far  as  this  is  true,  the  increase  of  the  "  ef- 
fective desire  of  accumulation  "  is  an  index  of  the 
degree  to  which  civilized  men  have  risen  morally 
above  the  dead  level  of  savagery.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  undeniable  that  such  a  purely  in- 
tellectual faculty  as  imagination  has  a  great  deal 
to  do  with  this  ability  to  anticipate  future  emer- 
gencies. A  savage  does  not  work  to-day  in  order 
to  keep  the  wolf  from  his  door  next  winter,  be- 
cause he  cannot  frame  in  his  mind  an  adequate 
picture  of  what  next  winter  is  going  to  be.  The 
temptations  of  to-day  he  vividly  realizes ;  but  of 
the  needs  of  next  winter  he  can  form  no  mental 
image  distinct  or  vivid  enough  to  determine  his 
actions.  So  with  the  careless,  improvident  man 
—  who  is  to  that  extent  a  barbarian  —  in  civilized 
society.  No  honest  man  would  ever  voluntarily 


220          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

run  up  a  bill,  to  be  paid  on  the  uncertain  chances 
of  his  income  six  months  hence,  if  he  could  ad- 
equately represent  to  himself,  in  imagination, 
the  discomfort  or  even  misery  which  after  six 
months  the  bill  is  liable  to  produce.  I  am  not 
speaking  now  of  such  pecuniary  obligations  as  are 
sometimes  thrust  upon  persons  by  circumstances 
over  which  they  have  no  discoverable  means  of 
control.  I  refer  only  to  such  obligations  as  are 
commonly  incurred  in  civilized  society  through 
excess  of  unproductive  expenditure,  or  what  is 
currently  known  and  stigmatized  as  "  extrava- 
gance." The  results  of  extravagant  expenditure, 
especially  as  connected  with  the  system  of  "  liv- 
ing upon  credit,"  form  a  very  large  proportion  of 
the  miseries  by  which  modern  society  is  afflicted : 
if  all  the  secrets  of  society  could  be  laid  open  for 
inspection,  we  should  perhaps  marvel  at  the 
amount  of  unhappiness  which  is  traceable  directly 
or  indirectly  to  this  cause.  Yet  the  reckless  as- 
sumption of  pecuniary  obligations  does  not  or- 
dinarily originate  in  dishonesty  of  intention. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  ordinarily  orig- 
inates in  mental  incapacity  to  form  a  distinct 
and  accurate  conception  of  the  future  results  of 
to-day's  actions,  cooperating  with  that  comfort- 
able assurance  that  things  will  somehow  or  other 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  221 

come  out  right,  which  nearly  all  men  persist  in 
cherishing.  The  lazy  belief  that  in  some  un- 
specified way  things  will  so  adjust  themselves  aa 
to  prevent  the  natural  consequences  of  a  wrong 
or  foolish  act,  is  a  very  common  fallacy,  upon 
which  George  Eliot  is  especially  fond  of  comment- 
ing. This  belief,  which  is  responsible  for  so 
much  imprudence  and  for  so  much  crime,  is  itself 
the  product  of  defects  that  are  partly  intellectual 
and  partly  moral.  It  arises  partly  from  a  slothful- 
ness  of  temper  which  shrinks  from  the  discomfort 
of  dealing  with  unpleasant  facts,  and  partly  from 
inability  to  think  out  complicated  relations  of 
cause  and  effect.  Thus  deeply  and  widely  in- 
wrought with  every  phase  of  the  moral  power  of 
resisting  temptation,  is  that  purely  intellectual 
power  which  we  may  call  "  representativeness " 
—  that  is,  the  power  of  forming  distinct  and  vivid 
mental  pictures  of  circumstances  which  have  not 
yet  begun  to  exist,  or  are  at  any  rate  remote  from 
us  at  the  present  moment.  Other  things  equal, 
the  man  who  has  this  power  of  "  representative- 
ness "  most  fully  developed  is  most  likely  to  ex- 
hibit self-control  amid  the  myriad  temptations  of 
life.  Yet  in  spite  of  the  highly  composite  char- 
acter of  the  process  by  which  the  habit  of  self- 
control  is  reached,  the  result  is  a  purely  ethical 


222         ^Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist, 

result  —  a  result  which  we  estimate  solely  with 
reference  to  its  bearing  upon  the  welfare  of  soci- 
ety. And  accordingly,  when  we  praise  a  man 
for  prudence  and  self-control,  we  rightly  feel  that 
we  are  paying  tribute  rather  to  his  moral  char- 
acter than  to  his  intellectual  capacity. 

Such  being  the  inextricable  complication  of  in- 
tellectual and  moral  processes,  even  in  such  a 
comparatively  simple  case  as  that  of  "  the  effect- 
ive desire  of  accumulation,"  we  need  not  expect 
to  be  able  to  deal  satisfactorily  with  such  a  com- 
plex affair  as  the  persecuting  spirit  without  tak- 
ing into  the  account  both  intellectual  and  moral 
factors.  And  in  taking  both  into  the  account,  it 
must  bo  borne  in  mind  that  what  we  have  to  say 
about  the  one  is  necessarily  incomplete  until  men- 
tally supplemented  by  what  we  have  to  say  about 
the  other. 

The  diminution  in  the  intensity  of  the  perse- 
cuting spirit  and  the  diminution  in  the  atrocity  of 
its  manifestations,  alike  furnish,  when  duly  ana- 
lyzed, an  excellent  illustration  of  the  intellectual 
and  moral  advance  of  mankind  from  a  state  of 
bestial  savagery  toward  a  state  of  refined  civiliza- 
tion. Let  us  consider  first,  for  a  moment,  the  dim- 
inution in  the  atrociousness  of  the  overt  acts  by 
which  the  persecuting  spirit  has  manifested  itself; 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  223 

-  and  afterward  let  us  proceed  more  thoroughly  into 
the  consideration  of  the  underlying  causes  of  the 
temper  of  mind  which  has  led  men  to  persecute 
one  another. 

In  the  lowest  stages  of  human  progress  which 
the  comparative  study  of  institutions  has  revealed 
to  us,  there  are  no  great  political  aggregates  of 
men  covering  large  areas  of  country,  supporting 
themselves  by  complex  and  multifarious  kinds  of 
industrial  activity,  and  bound  together  by  varied 
community  of  interests,  guaranteed  by  laws  based 
on  the  common  consent  of  all.  Viewed  in  rela- 
tion to  what  we  now  know  about  the  antiquity  of 
the  human  race,  a  society  like  this  must  be  re- 
garded as  quite  a  late  and  elaborate  result  of  the 
slow  process  of  civilization.  In  broad  contrast  to 
anything  of  this  sort,  we  find  mankind  in  their 
primitive  condition  —  such  as  we  may  still  find 
it  partially  exemplified  in  the  institutions  of  sav- 
age races  —  existing  only  in  little  tribes,  support- 
ing themselves  almost  entirely  by  predatory  occu- 
pations quite  like  those  by  which  bears  and  tigers 
support  themselves,  and  perpetually  fighting  with 
each  other  for  the  possession  of  the  hunting- 
grounds  that  insure  their  means  of  subsistence. 
In  this  primitive  bestial  state  of  society,  there  is 
nothing  like  a  normal  state  of  peace.  The  near- 


224          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

est  approach  to  peace  is  a  state  of  armed  truce. 
Warfare  between  tribes  goes  on  chronically,  the 
injury  which  one  inflicts  upon  another  being  com- 
pensated only  by  some  equivalent  injury  inflicted 
in  revenge.  As  all  the  foreign  policy  of  a  given 
tribe  may  be  thus  summed  up  in  perpetual  mur- 
der of  men,  so  its  internal  industries  may  be 
mainly  summed  up  in  the  perpetual  slaughter  of 
animals  that  serve  for  food.  Every  man  is  pri- 
marily a  butcher.  To  kill  something  is  the  prime 
necessity  of  life.  The  direct  infliction  of  death 
or  of  physical  suffering  is  the  principal  daily  oc- 
cupation of  all  the  members  of  the  community ; 
and,  as  a  correlative  effect  of  all  this,  the  ability 
to  meet  death  or  to  endure  physical  suffering 
without  flinching  is  one  of  the  attributes  of  a 
hero  that  society  prizes  most  highly.  The  most 
complete  instance  of  a  society  of  this  sort  that  lias 
acquired  historic  fame  is  that  of  the  Iroquois  of 
New  York,  in  the  seventeenth  century.  But  there 
is  no  doubt  that,  in  all  the  respects  we  are  now 
considering,  our  own  Aryan  ancestors  who  con- 
quered and  settled  Europe  were  substantially  like 
the  Iroquois. 

Now,  in  such  a  state  of  society  as  this,  it  is  ob- 
vious that  men  will  inflict  pain  without  the  small- 
est compunctions  and  upon  very  small  provocation. 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  225 

The  feelings  with  which  we  regard  to-day  the 
needless  infliction  of  physical  suffering  would  be 
utterly  unintelligible  to  them.  To  such  men 
murder  and  torture  are  common  incidents  of  life, 
which  no  more  interrupt  the  even  tenor  of  their 
ways  than  ours  are  interrupted  by  railway  acci- 
dents. A  man  born  in  such  a  state  of  society 
expects  to  meet  a  violent  death,  as  is  shown  by 
our  own  Norse  progenitors,  who  regarded  it  as  dis- 
graceful to  die  in  one's  bed,  — and  an  end  which 
a  man  was  willing  to  encounter  himself  he  might 
readily  be  supposed  to  be  willing  to  inflict  upon 
others.  In  this  way,  I  think,  the  excessive  cruelty 
which  characterized  the  persecutions  of  the  Middle 
Ages  is  completely  explained.  When  we  read  of 
the  frightful  tortures  inflicted  upon  Arabs,  Jews, 
and  Protestants  by  the  Inquisition  ;  when  we  re- 
member the  fiendish  outrages  perpetrated  by  the 
Spanish  armies  in  Holland  and  by  the  Imperial 
armies  at  Magdeburg  ;  when  we  recollect  that  in 
Spain  an  auto-de-fe  was  one  of  the  most  imposing 
ceremonies  of  the  Church,  and  that,  on  the  mar- 
riage of  Philip  II.,  burning  heretics  served  as 
nuptial  torches,  we  are  at  first  inclined  to  exclaim 
that  such  cruelties  could  never  have  been.  In 
human  nature,  as  we  know  it  to-day,  mean  and 
bad  as  it  too  often  is,  we  do  not  seem  to  find  any- 

15 


226  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

thing  like  a  parallel  to  such  horrible  cruelty  as 
this.  It  has  been  said  that  we  need  but  to  imag- 
ine the  state  of  mind  which  attributed  a  similar 
course  of  action  to  Eternal  Justice,  and  conceived 
it  as  part  and  parcel  of  the  essential  order  of  the 
universe,  to  render  all  this  explicable.  No  doubt 
the  self-same  ingenuity  which  men  displayed  spec- 
ulatively  in  theological  descriptions  of  the  next 
world  was  also  displayed  practically  in  such  in- 
ventions as  the  rack  and  the  boot,  the  Virgin 
armed  with  knives,  or  the  cell  whose  walls  grad- 
ually approached  each  other  and  crushed  the 
wretched  prisoner  into  a  jelly.  It  is  signifi- 
cant, too,  that  execution  by  fire  was  openly  de- 
fended as  being  symbolical  of  the  everlasting  pun- 
ishment destined  for  the  heretic  hereafter.  At 
the  execution  of  the  lad  William  Hunter,  in  1555, 
as  the.  fagots  were  set  on  fire  one  of  the  attendant 
priests  exclaimed,  "  Behold,  as  thou  burnest  here, 
so  shalt  thou  burn  in  hell !  " 

To  cite  the  atrocious  theology,  however,  as  the 
sufficient  explanation  of  the  atrocious  behaviour, 
would  be,  I  think,  to  invert  the  relations  of  cause 
and  effect,  —  in  homely  phrase,  to  get  the  cart  be- 
fore the  horse.  It  was  only  in  a  cruel  age  that 
the  doctrine  of  hell-fire  could  have  acquired  that 
hold  upon  men's  minds  which  it  had  acquired  in 


TJie  Causes  of  Persecution.  227 

the  Middle  Ages.  In  recent  times  the  doctrine 
has  become  almost  universally  discredited  through- 
out the  more  enlightened  portions  of  Christendom. 
Even  those  who  maintain  a  belief  in  some  kind 
of  endless  punishment,  no  longer  insist  literally 
upon  the  lake  of  brimstone  and  the  fire  that  is 
never  quenched.  Now,  the  doctrine  of  hell-fire 
has  become  thus  universally  discredited,  not  be- 
cause it  has  been  scientifically  disproved,  for 
science  has  neither  data  nor  methods  whereby  to 
disprove  such  a  doctrine ;  nor  because  it  has  been 
exegetically  shown  to  be  unsupported  by  Scrip- 
ture, for  the  ingenuity  of  orthodox  exegesis  has 
always  been  equal  to  the  task  of  making  Scripture 
mean  whatever  is  required ;  it  has  been  discred- 
ited simply  because  people  have  become  milder  in 
their  manners  and  less  used  to  enduring  and  in- 
flicting physical  pain.  The  doctrine  shocks  peo- 
ple's feelings,  and  so  they  refuse  to  believe  it,  no 
matter  how  the  logic  of  the  case  may  stand.  The 
sermons  of  Theodore  Parker  on  the  popular  the- 
ology well  illustrate  the  change  of  mood  that  has 
come  over  men's  minds  with  reference  to  the  jus- 
tice of  God :  the  whole  burden  of  these  discourses 
is  the  argument  that  the  infliction  of  endless  suf- 
fering on  the  creature  is  incompatible  with  infi- 
nite justice  on  the  part  of  the  Creator.  That 


228          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

such  an  argument  appears  sound  to-day,  whereas 
it  would  have  seemed  absurd  to  the  contempora- 
ries of  Luther,  is  due  to  the  self-same  widening 
and  deepening  of  human  sympathies  that  have 
put  an  end  to  slavery  and  to  judicial  torture,  that 
have  done  away  with  the  horrors  of  Bedlam  and 
the  "  stone-hold  "  of  Newgate,  and  that  have  em- 
bodied in  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
the  injunction  that  "  cruel  and  unusual  punish- 
ment "  must  not  be  inflicted  upon  criminals. 

Now,  this  general  increase  in  humanity  which 
is  discernible  throughout  the  most  advanced  re- 
gions of  Christendom  during  the  past  three  centu- 
ries, and  which  has  become  especially  conspicuous 
in  our  own  time,  is  undoubtedly  consequent  upon 
the  vast  increase  of  industrial  at  the  expense  of 
military  activity  which  has  characterized  the  same 
period.  With  the  gradual  aggregation  of  men 
into  great  and  stable  communities,  and  with  the 
accompanying  increase  in  the  complexity  of  social 
life  and  in  the  number  of  wants  which  labour  is 
required  to  satisfy,  the  sphere  of  industry  has  be- 
come immensely  enlarged  and  the  sphere  of  war- 
fare has  become  correspondingly  restricted.  I  do 
not  forget  that  great  and  terrible  wars  still  occur, 
but  it  remains  none  the  less  true  that  fighting  has 
ceased  to  be  recognized  as  the  principal,  or  even  as 


Tlie  Causes  of  Persecution.  229 

a  very  considerable,  part  of  the  business  of  society. 
Private  warfare,  once  universal  and  incessant 
throughout  western  Europe,  has  become  extinct, 
and  in  the  Northern  States  of  the  American  Union 
it  has  never  existed.  Brigandage  survives  only  in 
out-of-the-way  corners  of  the  most  backward  coun- 
tries of  Christendom,  such  as  Spain  and  Sicily,  or 
else  in  localities  where  civilization  comes  into  geo- 
graphical contact  with  barbarism,  as  in  Thessal^ 
and  Albania,  or  on  the  extreme  western  frontierr. 
of  our  own  country.  Duelling  has  become  nearly 
obsolete,  and  is  dealt  with  as  a  crime,  while  the 
so-called  code  of  honour  upon  which  it  thrived  has 
become  an  object  of  general  derision.  The  sword 
is  no  longer  a  part  of  a  gentleman's  wardrobe, 
and  laws  are  framed  to  prevent  the  carrying  of 
daggers  and  pistols.  Only  soldiers  on  parade  and 
sportsmen  nowadays  carry  deadly  weapons  openly. 
While  the  sportsmanship,  moreover,  which  sim- 
ply inflicts  death  on  bird  or  beast  is  still  held  in 
esteem,  emphatic  protests  are  made  against  the 
sportsmanship  which  wantonly  inflicts  pain,  as  we 
have  seen  in  the  controversy  about  fox-hunting 
between  Mr.  Freeman  and  Mr.  Trollope.  Organ- 
ized societies  exist  for  the  protection  of  domestic 
animals  against  cruel  treatment.  Even  where  it 
is  necessary  to  inflict  pain  for  the  purpose  of  pre- 


230  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

serving  life,  as  in  the  profession  of  the  surgeon, 
we  do  all  in  our  power,  by  the  use  of  anaesthetics, 
to  reduce  the  pain  to  a  minimum.  And  even 
where  it  is  necessary  to  inflict  death  as  a  means  of 
protection  to  life,  as  in  the  execution  of  murderers, 
the  dreadful  work  is  done  as  gently  as  possible, 
and  is  kept  hidden  from  the  gaze  of  the  public. 

It  has  thus  come  to  pass  that,  in  such  commu- 
nities as  England  and  our  own  Northern  States, 
the  majority  of  individuals  may  live  all  their  lives 
without  ever  being  called  upon  to  take  part  in 
putting  a  fellow-creature  to  death.  Most  of  us,  I 
presume,  have  never  witnessed  a  violent  death, 
and  know  of  such  things  only  by  hearsay —  only 
by  reading  the  newspapers  and  books  of  history. 
The  consequence  is  that  a  kind  of  feminine  soft- 
ness has  come  over  our  tempers  —  a  tenderness 
which  shrinks  from  the  very  thought  of  death 
and  suffering  purposely  inflicted  as  intolerable. 
In  military  ages  any  approach  to  such  softness  of 
temper  was  stigmatized  as  unmanly,  and  such  a 
type  of  character  could  not  flourish,  because  it 
was  unsuited  to  the  conditions  of  life  in  a  per- 
petually belligerent  community ;  but  in  our  own 
industrial  age  this  mild  type  of  character  is  fos- 
tered by  all  the  potency  of  public  approval.  But 
it  is  not  only  by  restricting  the  sphere  of  warfare 


The   Causes  of  Persecution.  231 

that  our  complex  industrial  civilization  has  nour- 
ished a  temper  that  shrinks  from  the  infliction  of 
pain.  Productive  activity  has  operated  in  this 
way  directly,  as  well  as  indirectly  through  re- 
straining destructive  activity.  Social  life  has  lost 
the  half-brutal,  half-ascetic  aspect  befitting  ages 
when  life  was  for  high  and  low  little  more  than  a 
struggle  for  existence.  It  is  a  trite  remark  that 
the  American  labourer  to-day  possesses  many  phys- 
ical comforts  which  a  mediseval  king  was  unable 
to  secure.  Throughout  the  greater  part  of  civil- 
ized society,  the  struggle  nowadays  is  not  for  the 
bare  means  of  subsistence,  but  for  the  attainment 
of  a  certain  amount  of  elegance  and  luxury.  The 
contrast  is  great  between  the  mediseval  baron 
who,  in  time  of  peace,  had  no  resources  but  in 
hunting  or  in  tournaments,  or  in  getting  drunk, 
and  the  modern  citizen  with  his  theatre  and 
opera,  his  lectures  and  concerts,  his  novels  and 
magazines  lying  on  the  table,  his  household  pic- 
tures and  bric-a-brac,  his  hours  of  work  at  his 
office  or  in  the  stock-exchange,  relieved  by  the 
quiet  domestic  enjoyment  of  the  evening.  Ac- 
customed to  all  this  complicated  comfort,  our 
growing  tendency  to  shrink  from  needlessly  en- 
countering with  what  is  disagreeable  is  still  fur- 
ther enhanced,  and  this  tendency  produces  a  vis- 


232          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ible  effect  upon  our  manners.  Whatever  savours 
of  personal  contention,  whatever  is  liable  to  wound 
the  feelings  or  disgust  the  senses,  is  peremptorily 
proscribed  in  the  usages  of  polite  society.  Com- 
pared with  English  and  American  gentlemen  of 
to-day,  the  gentlemen  of  Shakespeare's  plays  often 
talked  like  boors  or  ruffians. 

The  diminution  in  the  atrociousness  of  perse- 
cution, then,  is  simply  one  among  a  hundred  il- 
lustrations of  the  change  in  men's  tempers  that 
has  been  wrought  by  the  change  in  men's  occu- 
pations which  has  characterized  the  growth  of 
modern  society.  From  being  predominantly  war- 
like and  predatory,  human  activity  has  come  to 
be  predominantly  pacific  and  industrial,  and  out 
of  this  change  have  grown  our  milder  beliefs  as 
well  as  our  milder  manners. 

We  have  not  yet,  however,  got  to  the  bottom 
of  the  matter.  We  have  accounted  for  the  de- 
crease in  the  cruelty  with  which  the  persecuting 
spirit  has  manifested  itself,  but  we  have  now  to 
consider  the  underlying  causes  of  the  temper  of 
mind  which  has  led  men  to  persecute  one  another ; 
we  have  to  show,  in  particular,  how  it  is  that,  so 
far  as  all  matters  of  religious  belief  are  concerned, 
the  persecuting  spirit  has  already  greatly  dimin- 
ished in  intensity,  and  will  no  doubt  eventuallj 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  233 

become  extinct  among  civilized  men.  We  shall 
find  that  the  change  is  deeply  inwrought  with  the 
progress  of  mankind,  both  morally  and  intellect- 
ually. 

The  persecuting  spirit  has  its  origin  morally  in 
the  disposition  of  man  to  domineer  over  Ms  fel- 
low-creatures, intellectually  in  the  assumption  that 
one's  own  opinions  are  infallibly  correct.  We 
know  very  well  how  children  are  apt  to  behave 
when  arguing  some  question  of  no  great  conse- 
quence. Their  little  passions  warming  with  the 
discussion,  they  pass  from  argument  to  abuse, 
they  call  each  other  hard  names,  and,  at  last, 
they  begin  to  pound  each  other.  Most  people,  I 
imagine,  must  have  had  experiences  of  this  sort 
in  their  childhood.  I  recollect,  when  quite  a  lit- 
tle boy,  coming  to  blows  with  a  school-mate  over 
the  question  whether  Napoleon  really  won  the 
battle  of  Eylau.  Now  the  spirit  which  prompts 
a  child  to  pound  his  companion  who  resists  him 
in  argument  is  identical  with  the  spirit  which 
prompts  a  man  to  calumniate,  torture,  burn,  or 
otherwise  put  down  and  injure  his  neighbour  who 
refuses  to  reverence  the  things  which  he  himself 
deems  sacred.  The  more  we  reflect  upon  it  the 
more  we  shall  be  convinced  that  at  bottom  the 
feeling  is  the  same  in  the  two  cases,  though  in  the 


234  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

latter  it  is  accompanied  and  disguised  by  other 
feelings.  Now,  what  is  this  feeling  but  the  dis- 
position to  domineer,  to  assert  one's  own  person- 
ality at  the  expense  of  neighbouring  personalities, 
—  a  disposition  eminently  characteristic  of  the 
brute  and  of  the  savage,  but  less  and  less  charac- 
teristic of  man  as  he  becomes  more  and  more  civ- 
ilized ?  Bearing  this  in  mind,  and  remembering 
the  fable  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb  —  remember- 
ing that  a  strong  passion  is  never  at  a  loss  for 
reasons,  and  that  no  one  is  more  thoroughly  the 
dupe  of  the  false  reasons  than  the  man  himself 
who  is  under  the  control  of  the  strong  passion  — 
remembering  this,  one  has  the  key  to  a  large  part 
of  the  history  of  persecution.  The  paradox,  as 
regards  the  "  benevolent  persecutors,"  is  a  para- 
dox no  longer.  It  becomes  explicable  how  a  man 
may  sincerely  believe  himself  to  be  doing  God's 
service,  while  he  is  in  reality  obeying  an  impulse 
which,  in  an  ultimate  analysis,  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  the  impulse  to  domineer  over  one's 
fellow-creatures.  Thus,  though  the  plea  of  mis- 
taken benevolence  may  now  and  then  be  properly 
urged  in  extenuation  of  certain  special  acts  of  per- 
secution, it  cannot  excuse  persecution,  or  obscure 
the  fact  that  its  diminution  is  largely  due  to  a 
slow  moral  progress,  —  to  a  decrease  in  self-asser« 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  235 

tion,  and  a  concomitant  increase  in  respect  for  the 
rights  of  other  people. 

Very  closely  connected  with  this  moral  root  of 
the  persecuting  spirit  in  mere  arrogant  self-asser- 
tion is  its  intellectual  root,  in  the  assumption  that 
one's  own  opinions  are  infallible.  That  persecu- 
tion can  have  no  theoretical  basis  or  justification, 
save  on  the  assumption  that  somebody's  opinions 
are  infallibly  true,  has  been  so  thoroughly  illus- 
trated by  Mr.  Mill  in  his  beautiful  essay  on  "  Lib- 
erty," that  I  need  not  dwell  here  upon  this  part 
of  the  subject.  It  behooves  us,  however,  to  con- 
sider in  what  ways  the  progress  of  civilization 
has  contributed  to  weaken  the  spirit  of  self-asser- 
tion and  the  assumption  of  infallibility. 

Obviously,  the  disposition  to  domineer  over 
others,  to  assert  one's  own  personality  at  the  ex- 
pense of  others,  is  simply  one  particular  phase  of 
the  disposition  to  kill  one's  enemies  which  char- 
acterizes human  society  in  its  primeval  stages  of 
development.  It  is  a  temper  of  mind  which  was 
favoured  by  the  general  condition  of  things  when 
there  were  no  political  aggregates  larger  than 
simple  tribes  which  were  chronically  at  war  with 
one  another.  What  I  have  said  above,  in  con- 
sidering the  effects  upon  the  atrocity  of  persecu- 
tion of  the  substitution  cf  a  normal  state  of  peace 


236  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

for  a  normal  state  of  warfare,  will  also  apply  to 
the  present  case.  The  disposition  to  domineer 
over  your  fellow-man — to  make  him  obey  you  or 
assent  to  your  opinions,  whether  he  will  or  no  — 
is  only  an  evanescent  phase  of  the  disposition  to 
kill  him  if  he  interferes  in  any  way  with  the  ac- 
complishment of  your  purposes  in  life.  The  very 
same  diminution  in  the  sphere  of  military  activ- 
ity, attendant  upon  the  aggregation  of  men  into 
great  and  complex  political  societies,  which  we 
found  to  explain  the  decreasing  atrocity  of  per- 
secution, explains  also  the  decreasing  vitality  of 
its  moral  foundation  in  the  disposition  to  dom- 
ineer over  one's  fellow-men. 

The  weakening  of  the  assumption  of  infalli- 
bility in  one's  own  opinions  is  manifestly  a  con- 
sequence of  the  same  set  of  cooperating  causes. 
When  one's  life  is  extremely  simple  and  monoto- 
nous, consisting  of  very  few  experiences  that  are 
perpetually  repeated ;  when  one  is  not  often  com- 
pelled to  test  the  validity  of  one's  own  conclu- 
sions by  comparing  them  with  the  different  con- 
clusions which  other  people  draw  from  the  same 
data ;  when  one  lives  amid  a  certain  group  of  be- 
liefs, customs,  and  observances  that  are  never 
brought  into  comparison  (save,  perhaps,  in  exter- 
minating warfare)  with  other  differing  groups; — 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  237 

under  such  conditions  as  these  it  is  noticeable  that 
one's  opinions  are  formed  with  great  promptness, 
and  when  once  formed  are  unchangeable.  These 
are  the  conditions  under  which  the  opinions  of 
savages  are  formed,  and  the  chief  characteristic  in 
the  opinions  of  savages  is  their  wonderful  rigid- 
ity ;  you  can  no  more  change  them  than  you 
could  teach  a  fox,  when  chased  by  the  hunter,  to 
climb  a  tree  like  a  cat.  Or,  consider  the  case  of 
an  ignorant  woman,  in  the  lower  classes  of  civ- 
ilized society.  Her  opinions  about  men  and 
things  are  formed  in  an  instant,  by  some  mental 
process  of  which  she  can  render  no  account,  and 
when  once  formed  are  utterly  impervious  to  fact 
or  to  argument.  She  acts  on  the  tacit  assumption 
that  she  is  infallible,  precisely  as  the  savage  acts. 
To  think  of  hesitating  for  a,  moment  and  ques- 
tioning the  validity  of  their  opinions,  is  some- 
thing which  never  happens  to  either  of  them. 

This  is  the  obstinate  fashion  in  which  men 
used  to  cling  to  their  opinions  in  that  crude  state 
of  social  development  in  which  each  little  society 
was  at  war  with  every  other,  and  in  which,  ac- 
cordingly, it  was  impossible  to  bring  a  given  set 
of  opinions  into  free  contact  with  another  set, 
within  the  limits  of  one  and  the  same  society. 
As  men  have  gradually  been  brought  together 


238  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

into  great  and  complex  societies,  as  their  opinions 
have  been  brought  more  and  more  into  the  focus 
of  a  common  point  of  comparison,  this  rigidity  of 
the  mental  processes  —  so  like  the  rigidity  of 
the  mental  processes  of  the  lower  animals  —  has 
gradually  yielded  to  circumstances  such  as  favour 
flexibility.  With  the  case  of  the  savage  or  the 
woman  who  comes  to  scrub  the  floor,  contrast  the 
case  of  the  scientific  philosopher,  whose  opinions 
are  slowly  formed  after  a  long  and  careful  weigh- 
ing of  conflicting  evidences,  and  when  once  formed 
are  held  subject  to  perpetual  revision  and  mod- 
ification. On  considering  these  two  contrasted 
cases,  it  becomes  obvious  how  the  aggregation  of 
men  into  great  and  complex  societies,  bringing 
with  it  increased  variety  of  experience  and  in- 
creased knowledge  of  the  manifold  liability  to  er- 
ror, has  operated  to  destroy  the  confident  assump- 
tion of  infallibility  which  characterizes  the  bigot 
and  the  savage. 

We  have  now  made  out,  I  think,  a  very  fair 
explanation  of  the  way  in  which  the  persecuting 
spirit  has  been  affected  by  the  general  progress 
of  human  society.  But  one  of  the  deepest  con- 
siderations of  all  still  remains  to  be  treated. 

In  the  early  stages  of  society,  as  illustrated  by 
such  writers  as  Sir  Henry  Maine,  the  unit  of 


The  Causes  of  Persecution.  239 

society  is  not  the  individual,  but  the  family  or 
clan.  In  a  tribe  of  primitive  savages  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  individual  rights  or  individual  ob- 
ligations, in  the  modern  sense.  It  is  the  clan  as 
a  whole  that  incurs  obligations  and  asserts  its 
rights  as  far  as  it  is  concerned  with  adjacent 
clans.  Amid  the  pressing  interests  of  the  tribe, 
in  the  fierce  struggle  for  existence,  the  individual 
has  no  chance  whatever  for  especial  consideration. 
The  traces  of  this  state  of  things  confront  us  con- 
tinually as  we  study  ancient  history,  where  no 
fact  is  more  conspicuous  than  the  utterly  ruthless 
way  in  which  the  individual  is  sacrificed  to  the 
state.  The  bearing  of  this  state  of  things  upon 
the  history  of  persecution  goes  farther  than  any- 
thing else  toward  explaining  that  dreadful  his- 
tory. In  the  early  stages  of  society,  when  only 
small  political  aggregates  have  been  formed,  and 
when  each  little  aggregate  is  perpetually  strug- 
gling for  its  life  with  adjacent  aggregates,  the 
only  kind  of  responsibility  known  to  the  tribe  is 
corporate  responsibility.  The  tribe,  as  a  whole, 
is  held  to  be  responsible  corporately  for  the  acts 
of  each  of  its  members,  and  hence  it  is  neces- 
sary that  the  acts  and  beliefs  of  every  one  of  the 
members  should  be  subject  to  the  approval  of  the 
tribe.  If  any  one  individual  does  something  that 


240  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

is  displeasing  to  the  gods,  the  whole  tribe  is  liable 
to  be  punished  for  the  misdeed  of  this  one  per- 
son. This  feeling  was  universal  in  ancient  so- 
ciety, and,  until  we  realize  how  intense  it  was,  we 
shall  be  unable  to  understand  some  of  the  most 
remarkable  scenes  of  ancient  history.  Take,  for 
example,  the  frantic  excitement  which  was  stirred 
up  in  Athens,  just  before  the  expedition  against 
Syracuse,  by  the  mutilation  of  the  rude  way-side 
statues  of  Hermes.  It  is  impossible  for  a  modern 
man  to  understand  this  furious  excitement  unless 
he  duly  considers  the  fact  that,  in  the  minds  of 
the  Athenians,  the  whole  community  —  and  not 
merely  the  individual  criminals  concerned  —  was 
responsible  to  the  gods  for  this  outrage.  The 
whole  community  might  be  visited  by  the  angry 
gods  with  famine  and  plague  because  of  the  mis- 
deeds of  a  few  of  its  graceless  members. 

This  intense  feeling  of  corporate  responsibility 
pervades  all  the  life  of  ancient  society,  and  by 
keeping  it  in  mind  we  shall  understand  many  oc- 
currences which  without  this  key  we  should  find 
incomprehensible.  When  we  bethink  ourselves 
how  far  such  deeply  rooted  feelings  propagate 
themselves  in  history,  we  shall  be  inclined,  I 
think,  to  find  in  this  sense  of  corporate  responsi- 
bility the  weightiest  cause  of  those  deeds  of  per- 


The   Causes  of  Persecution.  241 

secution  which  have  made  history  hideous.  To 
remove  the  heretic,  lest  God  curse  us  all  for  his 
sake,  —  this  no  doubt  has  been  the  feeling  that, 
more  than  any  other,  has  justified  the  use  of  racks 
and  thumb-screws. 

But  with  the  progress  of  society  toward  wider 
and  wider  political  aggregation,  and  toward  greater 
and  greater  political  stability,  —  along  with  the 
growing  complexity  of  industrial  processes,  and 
along  with  the  partial  elimination  of  warfare,  — 
there  has  slowly  grown  up  a  feeling  that  it  is  the 
individual,  and  not  the  tribe  or  the  society,  that 
is  ultimately  responsible  for  the  individual's  opin- 
ions on  matters  of  religion.  Whatever  we  may 
think  to-day  about  the  results  or  the  method  of 
Mr.  Robert  Ingersoll,  we  certainly  do  not  enter- 
tain the  dread  that  because  of  Mr.  Ingersoll's 
crude  opinions,  or  his  intrusive  manner  of  ex- 
pressing them,  we  are  in  danger  of  a  famine,  a 
plague,  or  a  civil  war  next  year.  The  aggrega- 
tion of  small  communities  into  great  nations,  and 
the  growing  complexity  of  the  industrial  proc- 
esses by  which  great  nations  are  sustained,  have 
entirely  obliterated  in  our  minds  the  recollection 
of  the  kinds  of  belief  and  the  kinds  of  moral  ob- 
ligation which  characterized  the  primitive  tribal 
communities.  The  phase  of  feeling  characteris- 

16 


242          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

tic  of  the  primitive  community  showed  itself  all 
through  the  Middle  Ages.  In  the  following  pa- 
per I  shall  show  how  the  beginnings  of  modern 
history  were  signalized  by  the  revolt  of  Luther 
against  the  doctrine  of  corporate  responsibility 
for  opinion,  and  against  the  assumption  of  infalli- 
bility on  the  part  of  a  special  body  of  men. 

November,  1880. 


IX. 

THE  ORIGINS  OF  PROTESTANTISM. 

IN  the  year  1609  one  of  the  most  atrocious 
crimes  of  which  history  preserves  the  record  was 
perpetrated  by  the  Spanish  government.  The 
Moriscoes,  or  Christianized  descendants  of  the 
conquered  Moors,  had  long  been  objects  of  sus- 
picion and  hatred  to  the  Spaniards,  and  especially 
to  the  Spanish  clergy.  During  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury they  had  been  so  cruelly  treated  that  in  1568 
they  had  risen  in  rebellion  among  the  mountains 
of  Granada,  and  it  had  taken  three  years  of  ob- 
stinate fighting  to  bring  them  to  terms.  Their  de- 
feat was  so  crushing  that  it  was  no  longer  possible 
to  regard  them  as  politically  dangerous,  but  their 
orthodoxy  was  strongly  suspected,  inasmuch  as 
the  grandparents  of  the  present  generation  had 
been  converted  to  Christianity  only  by  brute  force. 
In  1602  the  Archbishop  of  Valencia  proposed  that 
all  the  Moriscoes  in  the  kingdom,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  children  under  seven  years  of  age,  should 
be  forthwith  driven  into  exile,  that  the  nation 


244          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

might  no  longer  be  polluted  by  the  slightest  sus- 
picion of  unbelief.  The  Archbishop  of  Toledo, 
primate  of  Spain,  heartily  agreed  with  his  rever- 
end brother,  save  as  far  as  concerned  the  little 
children,  whom  he  thought  should  be  included  in 
the  general  banishment.  To  Bleda,  the  famous 
Dominican,  even  these  measures  seemed  insuf- 
ficient, and  he  argued  that  all  the  Moriscoes  in 
Spain  —  men,  women,  and  children  even  to  the 
new-born  babe  —  should  be  ruthlessly  murdered, 
"  because  it  was  impossible  to  tell  which  of  them 
were  Christians  at  heart,  and  it  was  enough  to 
leave  the  matter  to  God,  who  knew  his  own,  and 
who  would  reward  in  the  next  world  those  who 
were  really  Catholics."  The  views  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Toledo  finally  prevailed,  and  in  1609,  as 
Mr.  Buckle  puts  it,  "  about  one  million  of  the 
most  industrious  inhabitants  of  Spain  were  hunted 
out  like  beasts,  because  the  sincerity  of  their  re- 
ligious opinions  was  doubtful."  Their  deportation 
to  Morocco  was  attended  by  characteristic  bar- 
barities. The  number  of  those  massacred  on  the 
way  seems  to  have  exceeded  the  number  of  the 
victims  of  Saint  Bartholomew ;  while  of  those 
who  reached  Africa,  thousands  were  enslaved  by 
Mohammedan  Moors,  or  slain  by  robbers,  or 
starved  in  the  desert. 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  245 

Now  these  Moriscoes,  thus  driven  from  the  land 
by  ecclesiastical  bigotry,  were  the  most  skilful 
labourers  Spain  possessed.  By  their  expulsion 
the  manufacture  of  silk  and  paper  was  destroyed, 
the  cultivation  of  sugar,  rice,  and  cotton  came  to 
an  end,  the  wool-trade  stopped,  and  irrigation  of 
the  soil  was  discontinued.  The  disturbance  of 
industry,  and  the  consequent  distress,  were  so 
great  and  so  far-reaching  that  by  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  the  population  of  Madrid  had 
decreased  by  one  half,  and  that  of  Seville  by  three 
quarters  ;  whole  villages  were  deserted,  large  por- 
tions of  the  arable  land  went  out  of  cultivation, 
and  brigandage  gained  a  foot-hold  which  it  has 
ever  since  kept.  In  short,  the  economic  ruin  of 
Spain  may  be  said  to  date  from  the  expulsion  of 
the  Moriscoes :  after  nearly  three  hundred  years 
the  country  has  not  yet  recovered  from  the  dis- 
astrous effects  of  that  unparalleled  crime  and 
blunder. 

Yet  this  atrocious  deed  was  done  with  the  unan- 
imous approval  of  the  Spanish  people.  Even  the 
gentle-hearted  and  high-minded  Cervantes  ap- 
plauded it,  while  Davila  characterized  it  as  the 
most  glorious  event  in  all  Spanish  history.  Nay, 
even  in  recent  times,  the  eminent  historian  La- 
fuente,  while  recognizing  the  terrible  economic 


246          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

results  of  the  measure,  maintains  that  it  was 
nevertheless  productive  of  immense  benefit  by  se- 
curing the  "religious  unity"  of  the  whole  peo- 
ple. Here  we  have  the  true  Spanish  idea  —  or 
to  speak  more  accurately,  the  true  ecclesiastical 
idea,  which,  through  an  unfortunate  combination 
of  circumstances,  has  always  dominated  the  Span- 
iards more  completely  than  any  other  European 
people,  but  which  has  wrought  mischief  enough 
in  other  countries  than  Spain.  To  insure  absolute 
"religious  unity,"  to  insure  that  from  the  Pyre- 
nees to  Gibraltar  all  people  should  think  exactly 
alike  about  questions  which  are  confessedly  un- 
fathomable by  the  human  mind,  —  this  seemed  to 
the  Spaniard  an  end  of  such  supreme  importance 
as  to  justify  the  destruction  of  two  hundred  thou- 
sand lives,  and  the  overthrow  of  some  of  the  chief 
industries  of  the  kingdom.  The  annals  of  perse- 
cution in  other  countries  serve  but  to  point  the 
same  moral.  Measured  by  the  quantity  of  suf- 
fering it  has  entailed,  as  well  as  by  the  whole- 
sale disregard  of  moral  rectitude  it  has  involved, 
the  history  of  the  attempt  to  enforce  "  religious 
unity  "  is,  no  doubt,  the  blackest  of  all  the  black 
chapters  in  the  awful  career  of  mankind  upon 
the  earth. 

Yet,  no  doubt,  the  object  for  which  all  this 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  247 

agony  has  been  inflicted,  and  all  this  villainy  per- 
petrated, is  an  utterly  worthless  object,  when  con- 
sidered with  reference  to  the  conditions  of  life  in  a 
civilized  society.  Not  only  is  it  not  desirable  that 
all  the  members  of  the  community  should  hold 
the  same  opinions  about  religious  matters,  but  it  is 
far  better  that  they  should  not  all  hold  the  same 
opinions.  To  the  Frenchman's  sneer  about  the 
English,  who  have  twenty  religions  and  only  one 
sauce,  I  should  answer :  By  all  means  let  us  have 
twenty  religions,  even  if  we  can  have  but  one 
sauce.  In  comparison  with  the  inscrutable  reali- 
ties which  religion  postulates,  our  most  elaborate 
attempts  at  theology  are  so  feeble  that  it  is  not 
likely  that  any  given  set  of  opinions  can  represent 
more  than  the  tiniest  segment  of  the  truth  : 

"Our  little  sj'stems  have  their  day; 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be ; 

They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 

And  Thou,  0  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 

In  view  of  this  weakness  of  reason,  when  con- 
fronted with  the  mighty  problems  of  religion,  it 
behooves  each  one  of  us  to  greet  his  neighbour's 
opinions  as,  perhaps,  containing  a  glimpse  of  truth 
which  his  own  have  lacked ;  not  to  scoff  or  frown 
at  them  as  "  different "  from  his  own.  If  "  re- 
ligious unity  "  is  ever  to  have  any  value,  it  can 


248  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

only  be  when  it  is  reached  as  the  outcome  of  the 
free  untrammelled  working  of  countless  individual 
minds.  Until  it  is  reached  in  this  way,  "  religious 
unity  "  can  mean  nothing  but  "  intellectual  tor- 
pidity where  religious  questions  are  concerned ;  " 
and,  meanwhile,  diversity  of  opinion  is  the  best 
guarantee  we  can  have  that  a  healthy  intellectual 
activity  is  going  on. 

In  the  present  paper,  however,  I  propose  to  ex- 
amine the  desire  to  enforce  "  religious  unity  "  by 
the  light  of  the  comparative  method ;  let  us  see 
if  there  has  not  existed  a  state  of  society  in  which 
it  may  have  been  desirable  that  all  the  members 
of  the  community  should  think  alike,  on  religious 
as  well  as  on  other  subjects. 

Toward  the  close  of  my  paper  on  "  The  Causes 
of  Persecution,"  I  called  attention  to  the  intense 
feeling  of  corporate  responsibility  which  pervaded 
all  the  life  of  ancient  society,  and  which,  no  doubt, 
goes  farther  than  anything  else  toward  explaining 
the  genesis  of  persecution.  To  understand  the 
origin  and  meaning  of  this  notion  of  corporate  re- 
sponsibility, we  must  cany  our  thoughts  back  to 
that  primitive  state  of  society  when  there  are  no 
political  aggregates  more  extensive  than  the  clan, 
or,  at  any  rate,  than  the  tribe,  formed  by  the  co- 
alescence of  kindred  clans.  In  this  lowest  stage 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  249 

of  human  progress,  blood-relationship  furnishes 
the  only  possible  bond  by  which  any  concert  of 
action  among  men  can  be  secured.  The  ideas  of 
right  and  duty,  in  so  far  as  recognized  at  all  by 
the  dim  intelligence  of  nascent  humanity,  are  rec- 
ognized only  within  the  limits  of  ascertainable 
blood-relationship.  The  comparative  study  of  in- 
stitutions, among  civilized  people  and  among  sav- 
ages, has  established  beyond  doubt  that  this  was 
the  social  condition  of  mankind  at  the  beginning 
of  its  distinctively  human  career.  I  have  myself 
shown  that  the  very  same  cooperating  processes 
which  originated  the  family,  originated,  also,  those 
intellectual  and  moral  differences  by  which  hu- 
manity was  first  raised  above  the  common  level  of 
apehood.1  Had  the  infancy  of  man  been  com- 
pleted within  a  period  of  three  or  four  months, 
as  is  the  case  with  other  mammals,  man  would 
never  have  become  human :  there  would  have 
been  no  social  aggregation,  and  there  could  not 
have  been  originated  that  long-enduring  process 
of  intellectual  and  moral  development  which  was 
rendered  possible  only  through  social  aggregation, 
and  which  went  on  so  far  during  prehistoric  times 
as  to  raise  the  human  brain  to  nearly  twice  the 

*  See  below,  the  paper  on  the  "Meaning  of  Infancy."    See  also 
Darwinism  and  other  Essays,  pp.  42-47. 


250          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

dimensions  of  the  brain  of  the  highest  ape.  But 
the  prolonging  of  the  period  of  helpless  infancy 
brought  with  it  the  genesis  of  the  family,  and 
thus  inaugurated  the  first  enduring  principle  of 
concerted  action  among  human  beings. 

By  simple  expansion,  the  family  grew  into  the 
clan,  and  by  expansion  and  coalescence  small 
groups  of  clans  grew  into  the  tribe  ;  and  through- 
out these  earliest  stages  of  social  organization  the 
principle  of  concerted  action  remains  the  same 
that  was  first  inaugurated  by  the  genesis  of  the 
family.  In  the  tribal  stage  the  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong  are  recognized,  but  their  application  is 
strictly  determined  by  the  necessities  of  the  tribe. 
Right  actions  are  those  which  help,  or  are  sup- 
posed to  help,  the  tribe  in  its  perpetual  struggle 
for  existence  with  surrounding  tribes;  wrong  ac- 
tions are  those  which  hurt,  or  are  supposed  to 
hurt,  the  tribe's  chances  of  success.  It  is  wrong 
to  murder  a  fellow-tribesman,  though  human  sac- 
rifices or  female  infanticide  may  be  sanctioned 
from  motives  of  general  policy  ;  it  is  praiseworthy 
to  murder  a  stranger,  unless  perhaps  when  he  be- 
longs to  some  powerful  tribe  which  it  is  impru- 
dent to  offend.  Above  all  things,  the  prime  social 
and  political  necessity  is  social  cohesion  within 
the  tribal  limits,  for  unless  such  social  cohesion 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  251 

be  maintained,  the  very  existence  of  the  tribe  is 
likely  to  be  extinguished  in  bloodshed.  Such  was 
doubtless  in  general  the  state  of  things  which 
lasted  for  more  than  four  thousand  centuries,  dur- 
ing which  men  lived  and  died  upon  the  earth 
before  they  had  acquired  enough  intelligence  or 
enough  political  stability  to  leave  anywhere  a 
written  record  of  their  thoughts  and  deeds.  Ten 
or  twelve  thousand  generations  of  ruthless  mili- 
tary discipline !  ten  or  twelve  thousand  genera- 
tions of  rigorous  conformity  to  tribal  require- 
ments, enforced  under  the  perpetual  threat  of 
tribal  extinction  !  Such  was  the  terrible  school- 
ing that  was  needed  to  fit  men  for  aggregation 
into  great  and  complex  societies.  Included  in  this 
military  discipline,  as  part  and  parcel  of  it,  was 
an  incipient  ecclesiastical  discipline.  Long  before 
the  dawn  of  history,  ancestor-worship  had  begun. 
The  ghosts  of  dead  chieftains,  in  this  primitive 
philosophy,  survived  as  the  tutelar  deities  of  the 
tribe,  ready  now,  as  of  old  in  their  life-time,  to 
punish  misdemeanours,  but  clothed  with  a  power 
alt  the  more  vast  and  awful,  as  its  nature  and 
limits  were  but  vaguely  and  incoherently  imag- 
ined. To  offend  in  any  particular  against  the 
ethical  and  ceremonial  code  established  from  time 
immemorial  under  the  pressure  of  tribal  necessi- 


252          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ties,  would  be  to  invite  the  vengeance  of  the  tute 
lar  deities.  The  offender  must  be  curtailed  of  his 
liberty,  or  maimed,  or  killed,  or  else  by  an  easy 
inference  the  fellow-tribesmen  would  be  liable  to 
be  held  as  participators  in  the  offence,  and  dire 
calamity  might  thus  befall  the  whole  tribe.  Tem- 
pest or  famine  or  pestilence  or  defeat  in  battle 
might  be  expected  by  the  tribe  which  should  fail 
to  punish  an  offence  on  the  part  of  one  of  its 
members  against  the  tutelar  deities.  This  feel- 
ing of  corporate  responsibility  is  always  to  be 
found  among  tribally  organized  barbarians;  it 
existed  among  our  own  barbaric  ancestors ;  ex- 
amples of  it  are  numerous  in  Grseco-Roman  antiq- 
uity ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  primitive 
society  the  feeling  was  universally  prevalent  and 
ferociously  intense  withal,  since  no  other  human 
passion  is  so  cruel  as  fear,  and  no  other  kind  of 
fear  is  so  cruel  as  the  vague  dread  of  the  super- 
natural. And  obviously  there  is  no  kind  of  con- 
duct which  would  so  surely  awaken  the  dread  of 
supernatural  vengeance  as  any  neglect  of  the 
time-honoured  rites  due  to  the  tutelar  deities,  or 
any  expression  of  opinion,  whether  serious  or  flip- 
pant, which  might  be  interpreted  as  derogatory 
to  their  awful  dignity. 

The  feeling  of  corporate  responsibility,  there- 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  253 

fore,  grew  out  of  the  necessities  of  that  primeval 
society  in  which  the  highest  known  order  of  polit- 
ical organization  was  the  tribe,  and  in  which 
neighbouring  tribes  were  perpetually  at  war  with 
each  other.  Under  such  circumstances,  those 
tribes  in  which  the  feeling  of  corporate  respon- 
sibility was  most  intense  must  in  general  have 
shown  the  highest  capacity  for  coherent  organiza- 
tion, and  must  have  subjugated  or  extinguished 
those  tribes  in  which  the  feeling  was  more  feebly 
developed.  The  feeling  must  have  grown  by  nat- 
ural selection  until  it  became,  as  it  were,  part  and 
parcel  of  the  mental  constitution  of  mankind.  No 
wonder  that  we  find  the  feeling  so  strongly  devel- 
oped among  the  highly  cultured  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans and  Jews.  A  feeling  so  deeply  rooted  in 
men's  ancestral  experiences  must  needs  survive 
long  after  the  establishment  of  social  conditions 
totally  different  from  the  conditions  which  im- 
planted it.  If  we  wish  for  evidence  that  this 
sense  of  corporate  responsibility  has  lain  at  the 
bottom  of  a  great  part  of  the  persecution  which 
has  made  ecclesiastical  history  so  abominable,  we 
may  find  it,  ready  to  hand,  in  the  tale  of  wicked- 
ness with  which  I  began  the  present  discussion. 
One  of  the  arguments  for  the  banishment  of 
the  Moriscoes,  upon  which  the  Archbishop  of 


254  .Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Valencia  mainly  relied,  was  the  argument  that 
the  whole  Spanish  people  were  in  the  sight  of 
Heaven  responsible  for  the  doubtful  orthodoxy  of 
these  converts  from  Islam.  "  He  declared  that 
the  Armada,  which  Philip  II.  sent  against  Eng- 
land in  1588,  had  been  destroyed  because  God 
would  not  allow  even  that  pious  enterprise  to  suc- 
ceed while  those  who  undertook  it  left  heretics 
undisturbed  at  home.  For  the  same  reason,  the 
late  expedition  to  Algiers  had  failed ;  it  being 
evidently  the  will  of  Heaven  that  nothing  should 
prosper  while  Spain  was  inhabited  by  apostates." 1 
This  argument,  which  produced  a  powerful  effect 
upon  both  king  and  people,  was  conceived  pre- 
cisely in  the  spirit  of  the  primeval  savage.  And 
so  when  Mary  Tudor,  being  afflicted  with  dropsy, 
supposed  that  she  was  about  to  give  birth  to  a 
prince  who  should  exclude  from  the  succession 
the  heretical  Elizabeth,  when  the  Te  Deum  was 
sung  in  St.  Paul's,  and  vessels  on  the  Thames 
fired  salutes,  and  merry  bells  were  set  ringing  in 
all  the  churches,  and  still  the  expected  prince  did 
not  make  his  appearance ;  when,  after  the  keen 
disappointment,  the  queen  began  to  reason  with 
herself,  "  she  could  not  doubt  that  her  hopes  had 
been  at  one  time  well  founded ;  but  for  some  fault, 

1  Buckle,  vol.  ii.  p.  47. 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  255 

some  error  in  herself,  God  had  delayed  the  fulfil- 
ment of  His  promise.  And  what  could  that  crime 
be  ?  The  accursed  thing  was  still  in  the  realm. 
She  had  been  raised  up,  like  the  judges  in  Israel, 
for  the  extermination  of  God's  enemies ;  and  she 
had  smitten  but  a  few  here  and  there,  when,  like 
the  evil  spirits,  their  name  was  legion."  1  As  the 
practical  result  of  these  pious  meditations,  some 
fifty  Protestants  —  one  of  my  own  ancestors 
among  them  —  were  forthwith  burned  at  the 
stake.  Obviously,  Mary's  reasoning,  like  that  of 
the  Spanish  archbishop,  had  no  validity  or  sig- 
nificance whatever,  except  as  it  appealed  to  that 
terrible  sense  of  corporate  responsibility  which 
they  had  inherited  as  a  tradition  from  prehistoric 
times. 

Now,  although  the  feeling  of  corporate  respon- 
sibility for  opinions  was  still  so  powerful  as  re- 
cently as  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
although  plentiful  traces  of  it  may  still  be  found 
at  the  present  day,  nevertheless  the  state  of  things 
by  which  the  feeling  was  logically  justified  has 
long  since  passed  away.  And  it  has  passed  away, 
no  doubt,  never  to  return.  It  began  to  pass  away 
so  soon  as  men  began  to  become  organized  into 
great  nations,  covering  a  vast  extent  of  territory, 

1  Froude,  History  «f  England,  vi.   330. 


256  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

and  secured  by  their  concentrated  military  strength 
against  the  gravest  dangers  of  barbaric  attack. 
In  European  history,  the  first  conspicuous  ap- 
proach to  this  new  state  of  things  was  made  by 
the  tremendous  conquests  of  Rome.  For  a  period 
of  five  centuries  after  the  overthrow  of  Carthage 
and  Macedonia,  the  Roman  government  held  to- 
gether a  greater  number  of  men  of  different  races, 
tongues,  and  faiths  than  had  ever  before  been  so 
long  held  together  since  the  world  began ;  and, 
throughout  the  vast  territory  over  which  it  held 
sway,  it  succeeded  in  maintaining  a  state  of  peace 
which,  imperfect  and  fitful  as  it  seems  from  the 
point  of  view  which  we  moderns  have  reached, 
still  presented  a  striking  contrast  to  the  perpetual 
and  universal  warfare  of  primitive  peoples.  Under 
this  condition  of  things,  the  old  ideas  and  feelings 
began  to  be  modified  in  many  ways.  The  pas- 
sage from  ancient  to  modern  ideas  of  social  obli- 
gation can  be  largely  traced  in  the  wonderfully 
suggestive  history  of  the  Roman  jurisprudence. 
In  the  early  ages  of  the  Republic  we  find  the  legal 
existence  of  the  individual  well-nigh  merged  in 
that  of  his  family,  and  we  find  his  duties  and  ob- 
ligations defined  entirely  by  the  status  in  which 
he  is  born.  But,  by  the  time  of  the  great  codifi- 
cation which  went  on  under  the  Empire  we  find 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  257 

the  legal  existence  of  the  individual  distinctly 
acknowledged,  and  his  duties  and  obligations 
largely  determined  by  contract^  as  is  the  case  in 
modern  society.  Manifestly,  the  relations  sus- 
tained by  the  individual  toward  so  great  a  whole 
as  the  Empire  could  not  be  like  the  relations  sus- 
tained by  the  individual  toward  so  small  a  whole 
as  the  tribe.  Through  the  sheer  breaking  up  of 
tribal  ideas  of  obligation  which  the  Empire  every- 
where effected,  the  ideas  of  individual  obligation 
characteristic  of  modern  society  began  to  emerge 
into  the  foreground.  The  most  fundamental  and 
far-reaching  effect  of  Roman  conquest  was  the  de- 
composition of  primitive  ideas,  political  and  social, 
legal  and  religious.  The  world  of  separate  tribes 
and  separate  cities,  each  with  its  peculiar  laws, 
and  each  with  its  local  deities  and  rites,  came  to 
an  end,  and  was  replaced  by  an  organized  Euro- 
pean world,  with  its  Roman  law,  based  on  ethical 
principles  acknowledged  by  vast  masses  of  men, 
and  with  its  Christian  religion,  based  on  the  as- 
sertion of  the  universal  brotherhood  of  men  and 
the  universal  fatherhood  of  God. 

As  in  the  Roman  law,  so  also  in  Christianity, 
the  innumerable  new  relations  into  which  men 
were  thrown  resulted  in  a  great  deal  of  abstrac- 
tion and  generalization  concerning  the  scope  of 


258          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

men's  rights  and  duties.  In  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other,  the  liberation  of  the  individual  from 
the  old  tribal  bonds  was  effected  by  the  process 
which  brought  him  into  immediate  relations  with 
a  state  possessing  a  dominion  that  was  practically 
universal,  and  with  Deity  regarded  as  eternally 
ruling  the  whole  created  world.  The  individual 
salvation  of  each  human  being,  as  dependent 
upon  his  spiritual  attitude  toward  his  heavenly 
Father,  is  an  idea  distinctly  present  in  Christian- 
ity as  first  enunciated,  and  in  the  prominence 
assumed  by  this  grand  idea  the  old  notion  of 
tribal  allegiance  to  a  tutelar  deity  fades  entirely 
out  of  sight.  The  idea  that  salvation  is  to  be 
attained  through  conformity  to  a  certain  pre- 
scribed set  of  opinions  or  of  ritual  observances, 
or  through  obedience  to  a  certain  ordained  priest- 
hood, finds  no  support  whatever  in  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  as  reported  in  the  Gospels.  So  far  from 
lending  support  to  this  primitive  idea  of  religious 
obligation,  Gospel  Christianity  is  in  itself  a  most 
emphatic  protest  against  it ;  and  it  was  through 
this  wholesale  discarding  of  primitive  ideas  that 
Christianity  secured  from  the  outset  an  element 
of  permanence  such  as  no  other  scheme  of  re- 
ligion has  ever  possessed.  Miraculous  legend, 
impressive  ceremonial,  priestly  devotion,  doctrines 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  259 

awful  or  consoling,  —  these  things  have  at  times 
been  potent  influences  in  maintaining  the  sway 
of  Christianity  over  the  human  mind  ;  but  the 
potency  of  such  influences  as  these  is  limited 
in  extent  and  in  duration,  —  it  is  dependent 
upon  transient  states  of  society  and  transient 
phases  of  opinion.  The  permanent  element  in 
Christianity  —  the  feature  whereby  it  may  still 
claim  the  allegiance  of  modern  thinkers  who  re- 
ject the  supernatural  theology  and  the  symbolic 
ritual  —  is  the  fact  of  its  placing  the  conditions 
of  salvation,  not  in  doctrine  or  in  ceremonial, 
but  in  right  conduct  as  flowing  from  the  impulse 
toward  a  higher  life  in  which  religion  most  es- 
sentially consists.  Not  they  that  say  unto  me, 
"  Lord,  Lord,"  but  they  that  do  the  will  of  our 
Father  in  heaven,  —  such  was  the  first  authorita- 
tive definition  of  the  aspect  of  human  life  with 
which  Christianity  primarily  concerns  itself. 

Thus,  Christianity  in  its  earliest  form  may  be 
regarded  as  a  kind  of  Protestantism,  in  which  old 
heathen  ideas  of  conformity  to  tribal  require- 
ments as  to  doctrine  and  ritual  were  utterly  dis- 
carded, and  in  which  religion  was  presented  as 
something  which  concerns  the  individual  alone  in 
the  presence  of  the  infinite  God.  But  so  lofty  a 
conception  as  this  could  not  be  realized  so  long  as 


260  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Christianity  had  to  make  its  way  as  a  militant 
force  among  peoples  who  were  still  largely  under 
the  influence  of  primeval  ideas  of  corporate  re- 
sponsibility for  opinion.  Already,  in  their  strug- 
gle with  the  pagan  society  of  the  Empire,  the 
preachers  of  the  new  ideas  found  it  necessary  to 
become  organized  as  a  "church  militant,"  and  to 
have  certain  recognized  dogmas,  or  —  to  use  the 
old  and  expressive  term  —  symbols,  as  a  sort  of 
banner  around  which  to  rally  their  adherents. 
This  militant  character  of  the  early  church  ex- 
plains the  persistency  with  which  all  gnostic  or 
rationalizing  interpretations  of  sacred  mysteries 
were  condemned  and  set  aside ;  they  were  liable 
to  the  charge  of  offering  some  possible  ground  of 
compromise  with  pagan  philosophic  ideas.  The 
most  rigid  and  uncompromising  symbol  —  the 
one  which  involved  the  most  complete  self-sur- 
render to  the  interests  of  the  common  struggle  — 
was  the  one  which  worked  the  best ;  and  hence 
there  lay  a  certain  sort  of  rude  practical  logic 
beneath  the  much-derided  and  often  misquoted 
phrase  of  Tertullian,  Credo  quia  impossibile.1  To 
rationalize  the  new  dogma  of  the  Trinity  was  in 
itself  to  make  a  quasi  -  concession  to  the  Neo- 

i  This  point  is  well  brought  out  in  the  Rev.  J.  H.  Allen's  excellent 
little  book,  Christian  History  in  its  Three  Great  Periods. 


The   Origins  of  Protestantism.  261 

Platonists ;  and  herein  was  reason  enough  why 
the  Athanasian  interpretation  should  supplant 
the  Arian.  An  organized  priesthood  was  neces- 
sary, too,  in  order  to  preserve  the  liberty  of  the 
Church  at  a  time  when  the  political  structure  of 
society  was  such  that  there  was  no  other  avail- 
able check  upon  the  autocratic  power  of  the  em- 
perors. In  its  attitude  as  a  "  church  militant," 
therefore,  Christianity  was  compelled  to  enforce 
conformity  to  dogma,,  and  obedience  to  priestly 
authority  ;  and  in  doing  these  things,  the  feeling, 
still  rife  among  men,  to  which  it  appealed,  was 
the  old  feeling  of  corporate  responsibility  for 
opinion. 

The  old  feeling,  thus  strongly  appealed  to  at  a 
time  when  its  basis  in  the  conditions  of  primeval 
society  had  been  destroyed,  received  still  stronger 
reinforcement  when  the  Church  took  upon  itself 
the  tremendous  task  —  to  which  the  political 
forces  of  the  Empire  were  no  longer  competent  — 
of  civilizing  the  barbaric  world.  From  the  time 
of  Ulfilas  to  the  time  of  Anschar  there  were  five 
centuries  of  militancy,  during  which  all  the 
power  of  the  spiritual  as  well  as  of  the  secular 
arm  was  taxed  to  the  utmost  in  the  work  of 
making  the  Teutonic  barbarians  adopt  the  re- 
sults of  Grseco-Roman  civilization.  In  warfare  of 


2G2          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

this  sort,  the  Church  could  do  nothing  less  than 
appeal  to  the  only  available  religious  conceptions 
with  which  the  past  experience  of  its  converts 
had  made  them  familiar.  As  in  the  political 
system  of  these  ages  of  transition  between  an- 
cient and  modern  civilization  we  observe  a  partial 
and  temporary  retrogression  toward  a  pre-Roman 
tribal  and  local  polity,  —  as  exemplified  in  some 
of  the  aspects  of  feudalism,  —  so  too  in  religious 
conceptions  we  may  observe  a  partial  and  tem- 
porary renascence  of  primitive  pagan  ideas.  To 
say  that  the  Church  adopted  many  pagan  sym- 
bols is  only  to  say  that  the  great  men  who  shaped 
its  missionary  policy  talked  to  their  pagan  con- 
verts in  the  language  which  they  were  best  capa- 
ble of  understanding.  The  Church  thus  adopted 
the  doctrine  of  corporate  responsibility  for  opin- 
ion, very  much  as  it  adopted  Yule  -  tide  and 
Easter  feasts,  and  the  worship,  under  a  scriptural 
name,  of  the  Berecynthian  Mother.  The  outcome 
of  all  this  was  that  in  the  process  of  Christianiz- 
ing the  pagan  world  Christianity  itself  became 
more  or  less  deeply  paganized.  Hence  those  ter- 
rible persecutions,  of  Albigensian  and  other  here- 
tics, which  marked  the  epoch  of  the  Church's 
greatest  supremacy,  and  which  no  one  thought  of 
justifying  from  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  but  only 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  263 

from  Old  Testament  texts  expressing  the  crude 
primitive  notions  of  the  Jews  in  their  semi-bar- 
barous period. 

But  now,  after  the  Teutonic  and  Slavic  bar- 
barians had  become  pretty  nearly  all  converted ; 
after  Europe  had  come  to  feel  itself  reasonably 
secure  against  being  overrun  by  Saracens  or 
Mongols  ;  after  the  principal  European  kingdoms 
had  arrived  at  something  like  political  stability  ; 
after  the  Crusades  had  shaken  up  men's  ideas  by 
bringing  the  civilizations  of  the  East  and  West  in 
contact  with  each  other ;  and  after  the  partly 
paganized  Church  had  begun  to  put  forth  such 
pretensions  as,  if  successful,  would  have  con- 
verted Europe  into  a  caliphate,  and  would  thus 
have  inflicted  upon  it  the  doom  of  stagnation  like 
that  which  has  overtaken  the  Mohammedan 
world ;  after  this  state  of  things  had  been  reached, 
in  the  course  of  the  thirteenth  century,  then 
symptoms  of  dissent  began  to  manifest  them- 
selves, —  vague  murmurs,  which  heralded  the 
great  Protestant  storm  that  was  gathering.  It 
was  in  the  thirteenth  century  that  the  Church 
thought  it  necessary  to  desecrate  the  noble  en- 
thusiasm which  had  inspired  the  Crusades,  by 
employing  it  to  crush  out  heresy  with  fire  and 
sword  in  the  southern  parts  of  France,  —  thus 


264  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

beginning  that  detestable  scheme  of  robbing  the 
French  nation  of  its  nimblest  minds  and  strongest 
characters,  which  was  continued  in  scenes  like 
the  St.  Bartholomew,  and  was  consummated  in 
the  infamous  dragonnades  of  1685.  It  was  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  too,  that  the  Spanish 
mind  hit  upon  that  ingenious  device  of  the  In- 
quisition, whereby  all  speculative  originality  was 
to  be  effectually  extinguished  in  so-called  "acts- 
of-faith,"  to  the  proper  performance  of  which  an 
abundant  supply  of  fire-wood  was  the  principal 
requisite.  These  new  developments  of  the  per- 
secuting spirit  show  how  formidable  the  spirit  of 
dissent  was  then  becoming.  This  spirit  of  dis- 
sent, both  at  that  time  and  in  later  days,  was 
fond  of  assuming  the  form  of  a  protest  against 
the  pagan  corruptions  of  the  Church,  and  in  be- 
half of  a  return  to  the  simplicity  of  organization, 
of  doctrine,  and  of  ritual,  and  to  the  purity  of 
life,  which  characterized  the  Christianity  of  the 
apostolic  age.  This  common  element  is  discern- 
ible alike  in  the  Bogomilians  of  the  East,  and  in 
the  Albigensians,  Hussites,  and  Lollards  of  the 
West ;  and  in  the  Puritanism  of  later  times  it  is 
conspicuous.  The  majestic  revolt  of  Luther  — 
an  event  which  did  more  for  true  religion  than 
anything  which  had  happened  in  the  world  since 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  265 

the  days  of  Jesus  and  Paul  —  can  in  nowise 
be  likened  to  the  innumerable  schisms  which 
have  divided  the  Church  on  special  points  of  doc- 
trine, organization,  and  ritual.  Its  scope  and  im- 
portance were  far  greater  than  any  of  these,  im- 
portant as  many  of  these  have  been.  It  took 
issue  with  the  fundamental  assumption  upon 
which  the  Church  had  come,  by  slow  degrees,  to 
take  its  stand  —  the  assumption  of  corporate  re- 
sponsibility for  opinion  and  ceremonial.  Its  de- 
nial, though  not  explicit  in  every  instance,  was 
nevertheless  couched  in  such  wise  as  to  cover  im- 
plicitly the  whole  ground  upon  which  the  Church 
assumed  the  right  to  interfere  with  individual 
freedom.  The  protest  of  Luther,  when  its  logical 
implications  are  unfolded,  involves  the  assertion 
of  the  right  of  each  individual  to  decide  for  him- 
self what  theological  doctrines  he  can  or  can  not 
accept,  what  ecclesiastical  observances  he  shall 
or  shall  not  adopt,  and  generally  in  what  way  he 
is  to  worship  God.  It  has,  indeed,  required  three 
centuries  of  discussion,  since  Luther's  time,  to  un- 
fold all  the  logical  implications  of  Protestantism. 
The  theory  of  life  which  it  contained  was  too 
lofty  to  be  thoroughly  and  consistently  under- 
stood, even  by  those  who  first  conceived  it  dis- 
tinctly enough  to  be  willing  to  fight  for  it ;  and 


266  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

most  Protestant  churches  have  practically  re- 
tained fragments  here  and  there  of  the  old  Ro- 
manist and  quasi-pagan  assumption  of  corporate 
responsibility.  The  struggle  of  the  Protestant 
world,  however,  has,  in  the  main,  been  a  struggle 
in  behalf  of  the  principle  of  individual  respon- 
sibility, and  in  general  the  most  energetic  Prot- 
estants have  been  found  on  the  side  of  absolute 
freedom  in  politics,  which  always  means  absolute 
freedom  in  religion  sooner  or  later.  It  was  the 
intensely  Protestant  Puritans  who  overthrew  the 
last  attempts  at  tyranny  on  the  part  of  English 
kings,  both  in  England  and  in  America. 

It  would  not  be  correct,  therefore,  to  describe 
Protestantism  —  any  more  than  it  would  be  cor- 
rect to  describe  Christianity  —  as  a  system  of 
doctrines.  To  point  to  any  particular  doctrines 
held  in  common  by  all  Protestants  would  be  as 
difficult  as  to  point  to  any  particular  doctrines 
held  in  common  by  all  Christians.  Viewed  in 
the  light  of  its  own  historic  genesis,  Protest- 
antism may  be  described  as  that  kind  of  religious 
polity  which  is  based  upon  the  conception  of  in- 
dividual responsibility  for  opinion.  The  antago- 
nist conception  —  of  corporate  responsibility  for 
opinion — had  its  origin  and  justification  in  the 
military  necessities  of  primeval  society,  when 


The  Origins  of  Protestantism.  267 

there  were  no  political  aggregates  larger  than  the 
tribe.  With  the  aggregation  of  men  into  great, 
complex,  and  stable  political  aggregates,  —  in 
other  words,  with  the  passing  away  of  the  cir- 
cumstances by  which  the  notion  of  corporate  re- 
sponsibility was  historically  justified,  —  the  notion 
began  to  lose  its  hold  upon  men's  minds.  As 
men  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  began  to  pro- 
ceed upon  the  notion  of  individual  responsibility, 
they  began  to  apply  the  same  principle  to  relig- 
ious matters;  and  great  religious  teachers  began 
to  protest  against  the  various  implications  of  the 
primeval  notion.  Such  a  protest  was  implicitly 
made  by  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  who  in- 
sisted upon  the  importance  of  conduct  and  the 
worthlessness  of  ceremonial  and  formula ;  and 
fifteen  centuries  later,  after  Europe  had  emerged 
from  a  life-and-death  struggle  with  barbarism,  in 
which  primitive  notions  had  been  partially  re- 
vived and  the  Church  had  become  partially  pa- 
ganized, a  similar  protest,  in  the  name  of  Christ, 
was  explicitly  made  by  Martin  Luther. 
January,  1881. 


THE  TRUE  LESSON  OF  PROTESTANTISM.* 

SINCE  the  day  when  Martin  Luther  posted  his 
audacious  heresies  on  the  church-door  at  Witten- 
berg, a  great  change  has  come  over  men's  minds, 
the  full  significance  rf  which  is  even  yet  but 
rarely  comprehended.  To  inquire  into  the  na- 
ture of  this  change,  and  into  what  we  may  per- 
haps call  its  ultimate  tendency,  is  well  worth 
our  while,  whether  as  students  of  history  or  as 
students  of  philosophy.  In  outward  aspect,  the 
results  of  Protestantism  have  come  to  be  very 
different  to-day  from  what  they  were  at  first. 
The  immediate  consequence  of  Luther's  successful 
revolt  was  the  formation  of  a  great  number  of  lit- 
tle churches,  each  with  its  creed  as  clean-cut  and 
as  thoroughly  dried  as  the  creed  of  the  great 
church  from  which  they  had  separated,  each  mak- 
ing practically  the  same  assumption  of  absolute 
infallibility,  each  laying  down  an  intellectual  as- 

1  An  address  delivered  before  a  Convention  of  Unitarian  clergy- 
men at  Princeton,  Mass.,  October  4,  1881. 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       269 

sent  to  sundry  transcendental  dogmas  as  an  ex- 
clusive condition  of  salvation.  This  formation  of 
new  sects  has  gone  on  down  to  the  present  time, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  continue 
in  future ;  but  the  period  when  educated  men, 
of  great  and  original  powers,  could  take  part  in 
work  of  this  sort  has  gone  by  forever.  The  fore- 
most men  are  no  longer  heresiarchs ;  they  are 
free-thinkers,  each  on  his  own  account ;  and  the 
formation  of  new  sects  is  something  which  in  the 
future  is  likely  to  be  more  and  more  confined  to 
ignorant  or  half-educated  classes  of  people.  At 
the  present  day  it  is  not  the  formation  of  new 
sects,  but  the  decomposition  of  the  old  ones,  that 
is  the  conspicuous  phenomenon  inviting  our  atten- 
tion. The  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
will  be  known  to  the  future  historian  as  espe- 
cially the  era  of  the  decomposition  of  orthodoxies. 
People,  as  a  rule,  do  not  now  pass  over  from  one 
church  into  another,  but  they  remain  in  their 
own  churches  while  modifying  their  theological 
opinions,  and  in  this  way  the  orthodoxy  of  every 
church  is  gradually  but  surely  losing  its  con- 
sistency. Nor  is  it  only  the  laymen  of  whom 
this  can  be  said ;  for  the  clergy  every  now  and 
then  set  the  example.  An  eminent  Congregation- 
alist  minister  in  Connecticut,  some  few  years 


270  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

since,  was  asked  why  he  did  not  go  over  to  the 
Unitarians,  inasmuch  as  he  not  only  kept  Strauss 
and  Renan  in  his  library,  but  even  loaned  them 
to  young  men,  and  publicly  eulogized  Herbert 
Spencer,  and  went  so  far  one  day  as  to  take  part 
in  the  dedication  of  a  Jewish  synagogue.  The 
quaint  and  shrewd  reply  was  :  "  I  don't  see  why 
the  Unitarians  should  monopolize  all  the  free- 
thinking  ;  I  prefer  to  carry  my  candle  where  it 
is  darkest !  "  It  is  only  four  or  five  years  since  a 
learned  English  bishop  completed  his  voluminous 
commentary  on  the  Pentateuch,  in  which  the 
sacred  text  is  handled  with  as  much  freedom  as 
Mr.  Paley  shows  in  dealing  with  the  Homeric 
poems,  or  Mr.  Grote  in  expounding  the  dialogues 
of  Plato.  And  the  history  of  this,  as  of  other 
less  conspicuous  acts  of  heresy,  has  been  held  to 
show  that  practically  an  Anglican  divine  may 
preach  whatever  doctrine  he  likes  —  provided, 
doubtless,  that  he  avoid  certain  obnoxious  catch- 
words. Among  Unitarians  this  doctrinal  latitude 
is  too  well  known  to  require  any  illustration. 
Yet  it  is  well  not  to  forget  that,  forty  years  ago, 
Theodore  Parker  was  virtually  driven  out  of  the 
Unitarian  Church  for  saying  the  same  sort  of 
things  which  may  be  heard  to-day  from  half  the 
Unitarian  pulpits  in  New  England. 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       271 

In  view  of  all  this,  it  is  not  strange  if  we  are 
sometimes  led  to  ask,  What  is  to  be  the  final  out- 
come of  this  decomposition  of  orthodoxies  ?  The 
total  destruction  of  religious  creeds  was  long  ago 
predicted  by  Catholic  controversialists  as  an  in- 
evitable result  of  the  exercise  of  that  right  of 
private  judgment  which  is  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  Protestantism  ;  and  now  it  begins  to  look 
as  if  the  Catholic  prediction  were  likely  to  be  ful- 
filled, although  Protestant  churches  have  warmly 
resented  the  imputation,  and  have  too  often  taken 
pains  to  show  that  in  strait  and  uncompromising 
bigotry  they  could  vie  with  their  great  antago- 
nist. While  Catholics,  on  the  one  hand,  have 
foretold  this  result  by  way  of  warning  and  op- 
probrium, on  the  other  hand  it  has  been  no  less 
confidently  predicted  by  atheists,  materialists, 
and  positivists  by  way  of  encouragement  and  ap- 
proval. To  Comte  the  chaos  of  opinion  which 
prevails  in  modern  society  afforded  proof  that  the 
time  was  ripe  for  discarding  theology  and  meta- 
physics altogether,  and  for  confining  the  opera- 
tions of  the  human  mind  hereafter  to  the  simple 
content  of  observed  facts.  To  Dr.  Biichner  and 
his  friends  it  presages  the  speedy  advent  of  that 
glorious  millennium  when  all  men  shall  felicitate 
themselves  upon  the  prospect  of  dying  like  the 


272  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

beasts  of  the  field.  On  the  one  side  and  on  the 
other  we  hear  it  maintained,  with  equal  emphasis, 
that  any  system  of  Protestantism  —  any  system 
which  seeks  to  combine  absolute  freedom  of  spec- 
ulation with  an  essentially  religious  attitude  of 
mind  —  is  logically  absurd,  and  is  destined  to  be 
superseded.  The  only  question  is  as  to  what  al- 
ternative is  to  survive  the  inevitable  fate  of  all 
such  misguided  attempts ;  and  here  Dr.  Buchner 
and  the  Pope  will  be  found  to  disagree.  While 
on  the  one  hand  it  is  held  that  the  course  of 
modern  philosophic  thought  is  so  distinctly  to- 
ward materialism  that  every  one  who  is  not  a 
materialist  is  behind  the  age,  on  the  other  hand  it 
is  prophesied  that,  out  of  sheer  weariness  of  the 
scepticism  that  is  the  perpetual  outcome  of  free 
inquiry,  there  will  eventually  be  brought  about  a 
renaissance  of  the  ages  of  faith.  I  do  not  know 
that  it  can  be  said  precisely  how  far  these  expec- 
tations go.  Probably  it  is  not  expected  that  cru- 
sades or  pilgrimages  to  Compostella  will  again 
become  fashionable  in  the  complex  industrial 
society  of  the  future ;  perhaps  it  is  not  ex- 
pected that  leaders  of  scientific  thought  will  ac- 
cept the  miracle  of  St.  Januarius,  for  the  Catholic 
Church  has  oftentimes  known  how  to  be  judi- 
ciously lax  about  such  matters;  but  there  is  no 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.      273 

doubt  a  vague  expectation  that,  in  spite  of  the  in- 
dependence of  thought  which  scientific  studies 
are  fostering,  a  line  will  somehow  be  drawn  be- 
yond which  men  shall  agree  to  submit  their  judg- 
ment to  that  of  the  Church.  It  is  not  Catholics 
only  who  make  this  tacit  assumption  :  it  is  made, 
in  one  form  or  another,  by  every  one  who  argues 
that  his  own  particular  orthodoxy  is  destined  to 
survive  the  shocks  of  scientific  scepticism ;  and  it 
underlies  the  remark  which  we  sometimes  hear, 
that  all  would  be  well  if  men  of  science  would 
only  keep  their  place  and  not  encroach  upon  the 
province  of  the  theologian.  The  alternative,  then, 
is,  when  stated  as  broadly  as  possible,  Will  the 
present  decomposition  of  beliefs  be  succeeded  by 
a  period  of  reconstruction  in  which  the  teachings 
of  some  church  shall  be  accepted  as  authoritative 
concerning  questions  of  a  purely  religious  nature, 
or  will  the  decomposition  go  on  until  the  last  ves- 
tige of  recognition  of  religious  questions  shall  have 
vanished,  and  all  educated  men  shall  have  become 
atheistic  materialists  ?  It  is  my  object  on  the, 
present  occasion  to  show  that  no  such  alternative 
really  confronts  us;  that  the  very  propounding 
of  such  a  question  involves  grave  philosophical 
and  historical  errors ;  that  neither  materialism  on 
the  one  hand,  nor  any  species  of  ecclesiastical 

18 


274  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

orthodoxy  on  the  other  hand,  is  likely  to  become 
prevalent  in  the  future;  and  that  the  mainte- 
nance of  an  essentially  religious  attitude  of  mind 
is  compatible  with  absolute  freedom  of  specula- 
tion on  all  subjects,  whether  scientific  or  meta- 
physical. 

In  my  apprehension  it  is  a  very  serious  mistake, 
though  a  very  common  one,  to  suppose  that  the 
tendency  of  modern  philosophic  thought  is  toward 
materialism.  On  this  subject  there  is  a  great  con- 
fusion of  ideas,  which  is  aggravated  by  a  general 
uncertainty  as  to  just  what  materialism  really  is. 
The  word  "  materialism  "  has  been  so  commonly 
used  in  a  vituperative  rather  than  a  descriptive 
sense,  that  it  has  become  somewhat  damaged 
for  philosophical  purposes.  Whenever  Auguste 
Comte  had  to  deal  with  some  opinion  which  he 
did  not  like,  —  it  made  little  or  no  difference  what 
it  was  about,  —  he  used  to  get  rid  of  it  without 
delay  by  calling  it  "  metaphysical."  And  in  like 
manner  the  word  "  materialism  "  has  come  to  be 
with  some  orthodox  people  a  general  term  of 
abuse  for  anything  which  they  do  not  happen  to 
like.  I  was  once  called  (in  print)  a  materialist, 
for  saying  that  there  are  no  trustworthy  dates  in 
Greek  history  prior  to  the  first  Olympiad  !  Some 
wiseacre  —  whose  lectures  I  have  lately  seen  re- 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       275 

ported  in  the  newspapers  —  solemnly  states  that 
he  shall  call  all  persons  materialists  who  do  not 
believe  in  the  freedom  of  the  will ;  which,  o! 
course,  would  include  Jonathan  Edwards.  Then, 
besides  this  silly  use  of  language,  the  word  has 
undergone  some  legitimate  historical  changes  of 
meaning.  The  great  Dr.  Priestley,  whose  theism 
was  quite  unimpeachable,  avowed  himself  a  ma- 
terialist, because  he  did  not  regard  it  as  beyond 
the  power  of  an  omnipotent  Creator  to  endow 
matter  with  the  capacity  for  feeling  and  think- 
ing. It  seems  to  me  that  this  was  a  mental  atti- 
tude much  more  devout,  if  not  more  philosoph- 
ical, than  that  of  those  modern  theologians  who 
vie  with  the  ancient  Gnostics  in  heaping  abuse 
upon  poor  blind,  brute,  senseless,  inert  "  matter." 
But  Priestley  was  by  no  means  a  materialist  in 
the  sense  in  which  that  word  is  correctly  used  in 
philosophic  discussion  to-day.  It  is  not  merely 
in  the  vocabulary  of  theological  abuse  that  the 
terms  materialism  and  atheism  are  closely  asso- 
ciated; the  opinions  which  they  connote  are  really 
linked  together  in  many  ways.  In  former  times 
it  was  customary  to  stigmatize  the  colossal  gener- 
alizations of  astronomers  and  geologists  as  "  athe- 
istical," because  they  substituted  divine  action 
through  natural  law  for  divine  action  through 


27o  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

supernatural  fiat,  which  had  hitherto  been  com- 
monly regarded  as  the  only  conceivable  kind  of 
divine  action.  Nowadays  as  cultivated  minds  are 
beginning  to  surmount  this  old  difficulty,  the 
bugbear  springs  up  in  a  new  quarter.  Now  that 
we  have  begun  to  study  psychology  after  a  sci- 
entific method,  and  to  derive  valuable  assistance 
from  the  investigation  of  nerve-cells  and  nerve- 
fibres,  and  now  that  we  have  begun  to  apply  to 
these  studies  the  profoundest  generalizations  of 
physics  and  chemistry  concerning  the  behaviour 
of  molecules  of  matter,  we  hear  so  much  talk 
about  undulations  and  discharges  and  nervous 
connections  that  many  worthy  people  seem  to  be 
afraid  of  seeing  it  proved  that  we  have  really  no 
psychical  life  at  all.  They  are  afraid  that  the 
human  soul  will  by  and  by  be  wholly  resolved 
into  an  affair  of  molecules  and  undulations  and 
unstable  equilibria,  and  so  forth  ;  and  accordingly 
all  speculations  even  remotely  savouring  of  phys- 
iological psychology,  or  of  the  correlation  of  vital 
with  inorganic  motions,  are  forthwith  stigmatized 
as  "  materialistic."  Even  the  Darwinian  theory 
of  the  origin  of  species  is  said  to  be  materialistic 
by  implication,  inasmuch  as  it  is  supposed  at  some 
point  to  derive  the  human  soul  from  the  psychi- 
cal part  of  a  brute  animal,  and  at  some  other 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       277 

point  to  derive  the  psychical  part  of  the  brute  an- 
imal from  something  that  is  not  psychical.  The 
common  reproach  aimed  at  all  such  speculations 
is  that  in  one  way  or  another,  either  directly  or 
by  implication,  they  all  tend  toward  the  interpre- 
tation of  psychical  life  as  a  temporary  or  evanes- 
cent condition  of  matter,  and  thus  in  reality  ban- 
ish soul  from  the  universe.  The  association  in 
the  popular  mind  between  materialism  and  athe- 
ism is  here  obvious  enough,  and  is  easily  justified. 
Philosophical  materialism  holds  that  matter  and 
the  motions  of  matter  make  up  the  sum  total  of 
existence,  and  that  what  we  know  as  psychical 
phenomena  in  man  and  other  animals  are  to  be 
interpreted  in  an  ultimate  analysis  as  simply  the 
peculiar  aspect  which  is  assumed  by  certain  enor- 
mously complicated  motions  of  matter.  This  is, 
I  believe,  a  strictly  correct  description  of  mate- 
rialism, as  it  was  held  in  the  eighteenth  century 
by  La  Mettrie,  and  as  it  is  held  by  Biichner  to- 
day. Whoever  holds  such  views  as  these  con- 
cerning the  relations  of  matter  and  spirit  may  be 
properly  called  a  materialist,  and  no  doubt  there 
are  many  educated  people  who  hold  such  views, 
but  that  the  general  tendency  of  modern  philo- 
sophic thought  is  toward  the  adoption  of  material- 
as  thus  defined,  I  emphatically  deny.  On  the 


278  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

contrary,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  course  of  modern 
philosophy  is  distinctly  in  the  opposite  direction, 
and  that  materialism  is  hopelessly  behind  the  age, 
*»o  that  it  argues  a  much  more  superficial  mind 
and  a  much  more  imperfect  education  to  agree: 
with  Buchner  to-day  than  to  have  agreed  with  La 
Mettrie  a  hundred  years  ago. 

Bear  in  mind  that,  before  a  philosopher  can  be 
correctly  charged  with  materialism,  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  that  he  should  hold  that  psychical  phe- 
nomena —  such  as  love  and  hate,  or  the  sensation 
of  redness,  or  the  idea  of  virtue  —  are  interpret- 
able  in  terms  of  matter  and  motion.  Nothing 
short  of  this  will  do.  It  is  not  enough  that  he 
should  hold  that,  along  with  every  emotion  or 
sensation  or  idea,  there  goes  on  a  change  in 
nerve-tissue  which  is  probably  resolvable  into 
some  form  of  undulatory  motion ;  for  this  is  but 
an  amplification  of  what  we  all  begin  by  admit- 
ting when  we  admit  that  during  the  present  life 
there  is  no  consciousness  except  where  there  is 
nerve-tissue.  If  it  is  materialism  to  say  that  for 
every  association  of  ideas  th^re  is  established  a 
system  of  paths  for  discharges  between  two  or 
more  groups  of  nerve-cells,  it  is  equally  material- 
ism to  say  that  a  pint  of  Scotch  whiskey  will 
make  a  man  drunk.  The  former  statement  enters 


The   True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       279 

very  much  more  into  detail  than  the  latter,  but 
there  is  no  other  essential  difference  between 
them.  I  do  not  wonder,  however,  that  people's 
minds  are  often  vague  and  confused  on  these 
points,  for  our  every-day  talk  is  full  of  materi- 
alistic implications.  We  say,  for  example,  that 
grief  makes  us  weep,  and  the  statement  is  true 
enough  for  ordinary  purposes  ;  but,  in  reality,  it  is 
not  the  grief  that  acts  upon  the  tear-glands.  The 
grief  is  something  absolutely  immaterial,  some- 
thing absolutely  outside  the  circuit  of  physical 
causation.  How  do  we  know  this  ?  How  do  we 
reach  such  a  conclusion  ?  We  reach  it  by  apply- 
ing to  the  subject  the  conception  of  the  correla- 
tion of  forces,  and  the  conception  of  the  atomic 
constitution  of  matter,  —  twin  conceptions  which 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  all  our  modern  scientific 
reasoning.  The  material  world  is  all  made  up  of 
systems  of  atoms  that  are  perpetually  moving  in 
relation  to  one  another.  In  an  ultimate  analysis, 
every  material  object  is  such  a  system  of  moving 
atoms.  Every  living  organism  is  a  system  of 
systems  of  such  atoms,  in  myriad-fold  orders  of 
composition,  and  with  movements  definitely  co- 
ordinated in  myriad-fold  degrees  of  complexity. 
Now,  all  the  motion  that  goes  into  any  organism, 
latent  in  tho  air  which  it  breathes  and  the  food 


280          Excursion*  of  an  Evolutionist. 

which  it  assimilates,  must  come  out  again  as  mo- 
tion, and  what  comes  out  must  be  the  exact 
equivalent  of  what  goes  in.  This  is  what  the 
doctrine  of  the  correlation  of  forces  means  when 
applied  to  the  living  organism  and  to  the  nervous 
system.  It  means,  too,  that  if  we  were  able  to 
trace  in  detail  the  career  of  any  given  quantity 
of  atomic  motion  between  the  times  of  its  enter- 
ing and  its  leaving  the  organism,  we  should  find 
through  all  its  innumerable  transformations  an 
exact  equivalence  preserved.  But  this  means  that 
the  motion  must  always  be  a  motion  of  material 
particles,  — something  that  can  be  quantitatively 
measured.  Once  introduce  into  the  circuit  some- 
thing that  does  not  admit  of  material  measure- 
ment, such  as  a  sensation  of  colour,  or  an  emo- 
tion of  grief,  and  the  whole  theory  falls  to  the 
ground  at  once. 

When  a  given  quantity  of  atomic  motion  in  the 
gray  surface  of  the  brain  is  used  up,  its  equiva- 
lent must  appear  in  the  form  of  some  other 
atomic  motion,  and  cannot  have  been  a  subject- 
ive feeling  ;  otherwise  it  is  idle  to  talk  about 
any  correlation  and  equivalence  of  forces  in  the 
case.  There  can  be  no  relation  of  equivalence 
between  a  sorrowful  feeling  and  a  motion  of 
matter  that  can  be  expressed  in  terms  of  foot- 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.        281 

pounds.  You  might  as  well  talk  about  a  crimson 
taste  or  an  acid  sonnd.  When  you  weep,  there- 
fore, it  is  not  grief,  but  the  cerebrum,  that  acts 
upon  the  tear -glands.  You  sp.y  that  the  grief 
causes  the  tears,  because  you  are  conscious  of  the 
relation  of  sequence  between  the  subjective  emo- 
tion and  the  objective  flow  of  tears,  while  you 
are  totally  unconscious  of  the  molecular  move- 
ments going  on  in  the  brain.  But,  in  reality, 
the  subjective  emotion  is  something  purely  im- 
material, or,  if  you  choose  to  say  so,  spiritual, 
and  its  relation  to  what  goes  on  in  the  brain  is 
merely  a  relation  of  concomitance. 

I  have  illustrated  this  point  at  disproportionate 
length,  because  it  is  both  important  and  difficult. 
Until  this  point  is  perfectly  clear  in  one's  mind, 
any  discussion  ofx  the  alleged  materialistic  ten- 
dencies of  modern  philosophy  is  simply  a  waste 
of  words.  It  is  very  clear  that  modern  philos- 
ophy does  show  a  decided  tendency  toward  in- 
vestigating what  goes  on  in  the  nervous  system 
when  we  think  and  feel ;  and  it  is  also  clear 
that  modern  philosophy  considers  itself  bound  to 
study  the  nervous  system  as  a  material  aggregate, 
with  an  atomic  constitution,  and  subject  to  the 
same  physical  laws  with  other  matter.  I  hope  I 
have  now  made  it  equally  clear  that  these  ten- 


282          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

dencies  of  modern  philosophy  are  just  the  reverse 
of  materialistic.  So  far  from  maintaining,  as 
materialism  does,  that  psychical  phenomena  are 
interpretable  in  terms  of  matter  and  motion, 
this  modern  philosophy  maintains  that  such  phe- 
nomena are  absolutely  immaterial,  —  that  they 
stand,  as  I  said  before,  quite  outside  the  circuit 
of  physical  causation.  If  the  world  were  peopled 
with  automata,  if  men  had  gone  on  from  the  be- 
ginning like  puppets,  eating,  and  drinking,  and 
marrying,  working  and  fighting,  exactly  as  they 
have  done,  producing  human  history  in  all  its  de- 
tails exactly  as  it  has  been  produced,  only  with- 
out any  consciousness,  without  any  sentient  life 
whatever,  then  materialism  perhaps  would  afford 
a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  world.  But  the 
moment  the  first  trace  of  conscious  intelligence  is 
introduced,  we  have  a  set  of  phenomena  which 
materialism  can  in  no  wise  account  for.  The 
latest  and  ripest  philosophic  speculation,  there- 
fore, leaves  the  gulf  between  mind  and  matter 
quite  as  wide  and  impassable  as  it  appeared  in 
the  time  of  Descartes. 

But  while  materialism  is  thus  more  than  ever 
discredited  by  the  dominant  philosophy  of  our 
time,  and  while  it  will  no  doubt  continue  to  be 
more  and  more  discredited  with  each  future  ad- 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       283 

vance  in  philosophic  speculation,  I  see  no  reason 
why  there  should  not  always  be  a  certain  amount 
of  materialism  current  in  the  world.  Very  likely 
there  will  always  be  people  who  are  colour-blind, 
and  people  without  an  ear  for  music.  So,  doubt- 
less, there  will  always  be  a  class  of  excellent  peo- 
ple with  a  fair  capacity  for  understanding  scien- 
tific generalizations,  but  without  any  head  for 
philosophy  ;  and  this  class  will  produce  the  Biich- 
ners  and  La  Mettries  of  the  future,  as  it  has 
produced  them  in  the  past  and  present.  Thus, 
one  part  of  my  question  is  disposed  of.  The  phi- 
losophy of  the  future  will  not  be  materialistic, 
and  there  is  nothing  in  the  dominant  philosophy 
of  to-day  to  indicate  that  religious  problems  will 
not  continue  to  be  made  the  subjects  of  specula- 
tion. I  recollect  once  asking  Mr.  Spencer's  opin- 
ion on  some  question  of  pure  ontology.  He  re- 
plied that  he  had  no  opinion ;  not  because  his 
mind  was  necessarily  hostile  to  entertaining  such 
questions,  but  simply  because  he  was  so  entirely 
occupied  in  working  out  the  theory  of  evolution, 
in  its  innumerable  applications  to  the  world  of 
phenomena,  that  he  had  not  time  and  strength 
left  to  expend  on  problems  that  are  confessedly 
insoluble.  This  was  the  answer  of  a  true  man  of 
science  ;  and  it  is  worth  repeating  for  the  benefit 


284          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

of  those  silly  people  who  think  it  is  not  enough 
that  Mr.  Spencer  should  have  made  greater  ad- 
ditions to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge  than 
have  ever  been  made  by  any  other  man  since  the 
beginning  of  the  world,  and  complain  of  him  be- 
cause he  has  not  given  us  a  complete  and  final 
system  of  theology  into  the  bargain.  But  Mr. 
Spencer's  answer  further  illustrates  very  well  the 
philosophic  attitude  of  the  present  age.  The 
present  age  is  occupied,  above  all  things,  in  in- 
vestigating the  intimate  constitution  of  the  ma- 
terial universe,  and  tracing  therefrom  its  past 
history  and  its  future  career.  The  conception  of 
evolution  is  everywhere  being  substituted  for  that 
of  special  creation  ;  and  this  involves  the  most  ex- 
tensive and  thorough  change  that  has  ever  taken 
place  in  men's  thoughts  about  the  world  they  live 
in.  For  the  present,  this  business  absorbs  all  the 
most  active  and  original  minds,  so  that  no  time 
is  left  for  metaphysical  speculations.  We  are 
becoming  wrapt  in  the  study  of  origins,  as  the 
men  of  the  thirteenth  century  were  wrapt  in  the 
study  of  particulars  and  universals.  But  there  is 
no  likelihood  that  this  will  always  be  so.  By  and 
by  all  educated  people  will  be  evolutionists,  and 
then  it  will  be  seen,  more  clearly  than  it  is  now, 
that  while  the  doctrine  of  evolution  has  enor 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       285 

mously  increased  our  knowledge  of  the  phenome- 
nal universe,  it  really  leaves  all  ultimate  questions 
as  much  open  for  discussion  as  they  ever  were.  It 
is  Mr.  Spencer  himself  who  has  said  that  every 
new  physical  problem  leads  at  once  to  a  meta- 
physical problem  that  we  can  neither  solve  nor 
elude.  Solve  it  doubtless  we  cannot,  elude  it  we 
also  cannot,  and  so  discuss  it  we  will.  Such,  I 
presume,  will  be  the  course  which  philosophy  will 
take  where  religious  questions  are  concerned. 

And  now  we  are  brought  to  the  other  part  of 
my  question.  Will  the  time  ever  come  again 
when  men  will  be  absorbed  in  questions  of  a 
transcendental  or  ontological  character,  as  Aqui- 
nas and  other  great  mediaeval  thinkers  were  ab- 
sorbed ?  It  seems  to  me  quite  possible  that  the 
interest  in  such  matters  may  again  become  as  in- 
tense, though  not  so  exclusive,  as  it  was  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  But  if  it  be  asked  whether  there 
can  ever  again  be  a  theological  renaissance  of 
such  a  character  that  men  shall  agree  to  sur- 
render their  right  of  private  judgment  on  purely 
religious  questions,  and  accept  the  teachings  of 
any  church,  the  reply  must  be  that  any  renais- 
sance of  this  sort  is  utterly  impossible.  The 
further  question,  whether  unity  of  belief  can  ever 
be  secured  in  any  other  way,  is  to  be  met  by  the 


286  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

assertion  that  unity  of  belief  is  no  longer  either 
possible  or  desirable.  Such  a  statement  as  this  is 
very  startling,  and  more  or  less  puzzling,  to  many 
people,  as  I  have  often  had  occasion  to  observe  ; 
and  when  the  truth  of  it  has  come  to  be  gener- 
ally and  thoroughly  realized,  it  will  probably  be 
the  greatest  step  in  religious  progress  that  has 
ever  been  accomplished.  Once,  we  know,  unity 
of  belief  was  held  to  be  of  such  supreme  impor- 
tance that  the  faintest  whisper  of  dissent  must 
be  punished  with  torture  and  death.  I  have  else- 
where sought  to  account,  on  historical  grounds, 
for  the  existence  of  this  persecuting  spirit,  as 
well  as  for  its  decline  in  modern  times.  In  a 
paper  on  "  The  Causes  of  Persecution,"  I  showed 
how  ancient  society  was  pervaded  by  an  intense 
feeling  of  corporate  responsibility,  —  a  feeling 
that  the  whole  community  was  liable  to  be  pun- 
ished by  the  gods  for  the  misdeeds  of  any  one  of 
its  individual  members.  In  early  times  this  feel- 
ing of  corporate  responsibility,  taken  in  connec- 
tion with  the  barbaric  theories  of  the  universe 
then  current,  was  the  mainstay  and  support  of 
priesthoods.  And  it  was  to  the  persistence  of  this 
feeling  down  through  the  Middle  Ages  that  the 
horrors  of  religious  persecution  were  chiefly  due. 
In  a  second  paper,  on  "  The  Origins  of  Protest- 


The  True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       287 

antism,"  I  showed  that  the  feeling  of  corporate 
responsibility  had  its  legitimate  origin  in  the 
military  necessities  of  primitive  societies.  In 
ages  when  there  were  no  political  aggregations 
of  men  larger  than  tribes,  and  when  the  relations 
between  tribes  were  chiefly  those  of  chronic  war- 
fare, a  rude  and  savage  discipline,  in  which  the 
legal  existence  of  the  individual  was  virtually 
submerged  in  the  interests  of  the  tribe,  was  ab- 
solutely necessary.  The  feeling  that  the  whole 
tribe  was  liable  to  be  visited  with  defeat  or  fam- 
ine or  pestilence,  on  account  of  sacrilege  com- 
mitted by  one  of  its  members,  was  part  and 
parcel  of  such  a  state  of  society.  This  feeling 
of  corporate  responsibility  must  have  grown  in 
strength  through  many  ages  by  natural  selection, 
as  those  tribes  in  which  it  was  most  effectively 
developed  must  in  general  have  shown  the  high- 
est capacity  for  social  organization,  and  must  have 
exterminated  or  enslaved  their  neighbours.  Hav- 
ing so  long  been  favoured  by  natural  selection, 
the  feeling  of  corporate  responsibility  for  conduct 
and  opinion  became  so  deeply  grounded  in  men's 
minds  that  it  long  survived  the  stage  of  social 
development  in  which  it  had  its  origin.  Most 
conspicuous  and  terrible  of  the  consequences  of 
this  deeply  rooted  feeling  has  been  that  fanatical 


288          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

craving  for  unity  of  belief  in  religious  matters 
which  has  been  the  source  of  some  of  the  worst 
evils  that  have  afflicted  mankind.  But  among 
the  many  changes  which  have  affected  the  rela- 
tions of  the  individual  to  the  community,  with 
the  growth  of  great  and  complex  modern  soci- 
eties, there  has  come  the  gradual  substitution  of 
the  idea  of  individual  responsibility  for  that  of 
corporate  responsibility.  From  this  point  of  view, 
the  Protestantism  of  Luther  is  significant  mainly 
as  a  revolt  against  primeval  notions  of  the  rela- 
tions of  the  individual  to  the  community,  which 
have  long  since  survived  their  usefulness.  Obvi- 
ously, the  disintegration  of  orthodoxies  which 
characterizes  the  present  age  is  simply  the  further 
development  of  the  same  protest  in  behalf  of  in- 
dividual responsibility  for  opinion.  And  to  those 
who  take  any  interest  in  the  present  discussion, 
I  hardly  need  argue  that  any  revival  of  the  meth- 
ods of  Catholicism  could  never  occur,  except  as 
the  concomitant  of  a  wholly  improbable  retrogres- 
sion of  society  toward  the  barbaric  type.  The 
very  conception  of  an  infallible  church  is  so 
clearly  a  survival  from  primitive  religious  ideas, 
that  to  imagine  such  an  institution  presiding  over 
the  society  of  the  future  involves  a  most  gro- 
tesque anachronism.  Nevertheless,  the  uses  of 


The   True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       289 

the  Catholic  Church  are  such  that  it  is  likely  still 
to  survive  for  a  very  long  time,  though  with  di- 
minishing influence ;  and  as  it  affords  a  refuge 
for  such  earnest  and  thoughtful  souls  as  find  the 
atmosphere  of  free  discussion  too  bracing,  it  will 
probably  long  continue  to  receive  accessions  from 
the  ranks  of  the  various  Protestant  orthodoxies 
that  are  now  so  rapidly  disintegrating. 

With  the  fading  away  of  the  old  notion  of  cor- 
porate responsibility  for  opinion,  the  value  at- 
tached to  unity  of  belief  has  greatly  diminished, 
and  attempts  to  secure  such  unity  by  violent 
means  have  become  generally  discredited.  It  is 
at  last  beginning  to  be  apprehended  that  if  unity 
of  belief  is  to  have  any  real  value,  it  can  only  be 
when  it  is  the  result  of  the  free  working  of  differ- 
ent minds.  But  unity  of  belief  in  religious  mat- 
ters is  not  very  likely  to  be  reached  in  any  such 
way,  for  the  conditions  of  the  case  are  totally 
different  from  those  of  scientific  discussion.  The 
difference  may  be  best  appreciated  by  recalling 
the  useful  distinction  drawn  by  positivism  between 
science  and  metaphysics.  According  to  positivism, 
the  essential  distinction  between  a  scientific  hy- 
pothesis, such  as  the  undulatory  theory  of  light, 
and  a  metaphysical  hypothesis,  such  as  the  Leib- 
nitzian  theory  of  preestablished  harmony,  is  that 

19 


290          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

the  one  admits  of  verification  —  whether  by  obser- 
vation, experiment,  or  deduction  —  while  the  other 
does  not.  Or,  from  another  point  of  view,  the  one 
may  be  made  a  working  hypothesis  from  which 
independent  inquirers  will  arrive  at  mutually  con- 
gruous results,  while  the  other  cannot.  This  dis- 
tinction is  one  of  the  very  few  points  made  by 
positivism  which  have  been  generally  adopted 
into  modern  philosophy  ;  but  the  use  which  posi- 
tivists  have  made  of  it  is  by  no  means  philosophi- 
cal. Comte  himself  set  an  inordinate  value  upon 
unity  of  belief,  and  in  this  his  disciples  have  gen- 
erally followed  him ;  and  the  way  in  which  they 
propose  to  secure  such  unity  is  simply  to  ignore 
all  problems  whatever  in  which  scientific  methods 
of  demonstration  are  not  accessible.  This  seems 
like  paying  an  exorbitant  price  for  a  privilege  of 
very  doubtful  value.  But  without  following  the 
positivists  in  this,  we  may  admit  the  usefulness  of 
their  distinction  between  problems  that  transcend 
the  limits  of  scientific  demonstration  and  prob- 
lems that  lie  within  those  limits.  Clearly,  if  I 
hold  one  opinion  concerning  the  passage  of  light 
through  certain  crystals,  and  my  neighbour  holds 
a  different  or  contrary  opinion,  I  am  entitled  to 
expect  either  that  he  can  be  brought  to  adopt  my 
opinion,  or  that  I  can  be  brought  to  adopt  his, 


The,   True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       291 

Means  of  verification  must  exist ;  and  even  if  the 
question  cannot  be  settled  to-day,  we  have  no 
doubt  that  it  can  be  settled  by  and  by.  But  if  I 
hold  one  opinion  concerning  the  conscious  exist- 
ence of  the  soul  after  death,  while  my  neighbour 
holds  a  contrary  opinion,  I  am  not  entitled  to  ex- 
pect that  we  can  ever  be  brought  to  an  agree- 
ment. For  the  question  confessedly  transcends 
the  limits  of  scientific  demonstration.  Yet  in 
spite  of  all  that,  one  of  our  contrary  opinions, 
and  possibly  both,  may  contain  some  adumbra- 
tion of  a  truth.  And  more  than  a  faint  glimmer- 
ing of  truth  we  can  hardly  expect  to  be  contained 
in  any  of  our  opinions  on  religious  matters,  for 
the  problems  are  too  vast  when  compared  with 
our  means  of  dealing  with  them.  Hence,  instead 
of  condemning  variety  of  belief  on  such  subjects, 
we  should  rather  welcome  each  fresh  suggestion 
as  possibly  containing  some  adumbration  of  a 
truth  which  we  have  hitherto  overlooked. 

And  thus  we  arrive  at  last  at  the  true  lesson  of 
Protestantism,  which  is  simply  this  :  that  religious 
belief  is  something  which  in  no  way  concerns  so- 
ciety, but  which  concerns  only  the  individual.  In 
all  other  relations  the  individual  is  more  or  less 
responsible  to  society  ;  but,  as  for  his  religious  be- 
lief and  his  religious  life,  these  are  matters  which 


292  Excursions  Q-"  an  Evolutionist. 

lie  solely  between  himself  and  his  God.  On  such 
subjects  no  man  may  rightfully  chide  his  neigh- 
bour, or  call  him  foolrh  ;  for,  in  presence  of  the 
transcendent  Reality,  the  foolishness  of  one  man 
differs  not  much  froru  the  wisdom  of  another. 
When  this  lesson  sha1!  have  been  duly  compre- 
hended and  taken  to  heart,  I  make  no  doubt  that 
religious  speculation  will  continue  to  go  on  :  but 
such  words  as  "  infidelity  "  and  "  heresy,"  the 
present  currency  of  which  serves  only  to  show 
how  the  remnants  of  primitive  barbaric  thought 
still  cling  to  us  and  hamper  our  progress  —  such 
words  will  have  become  obsolete,  and  perhaps  un- 
intelligible, save  to  the  philosophic  student  of  his- 
tory. In  discussion  conducted  in  such  a  mood, 
there  will,  no  doubt,  be  a  great  lack  of  finality. 
But  the  craving  for  finality  is  itself,  in  various  de- 
grees, an  instinct  of  the  uneducated  man,  of  the 
child,  of  the  savage,  and  perhaps  of  the  brute. 
To  feel  that  the  last  word  has  been  said  on  any 
subject  is  not  a  desideratum  with  the  true  philos- 
opher, who  knows  full  well  that  the  truth  he  an- 
nounces to-day  will  open  half  a  dozen  .questions 
where  it  settles  one,  and  will  presently  be  vari- 
ously qualified,  and  at  last  absorbed  in  some  wider 
and  deeper  truth.  When  all  this  shall  have  come 
to  be  realized,  and  shall  have  been  made  part 


The   True  Lesson  of  Protestantism.       293 

and  parcel  of  the  daily  mental  habit  of  men,  then 
our  human  treatment  of  religion  will  no  longer 
be  what  it  has  too  often  been  in  the  past,  —  a 
wretched  squabble,  fit  only  for  the  demons  of 
Malebolge,  —  but  it  wiL1  have  come  to  be  like 
the  sweet  discourse  of  aaints  in  Dante's  "  Para- 
dise." 

September,  1881. 


XI 

EVOLUTION  AND  RELIGION.! 

MR.  PRESIDENT  : 2  The  thought  which  you 
have  uttered  suggests  so  many  and  such  fruitful 
themes  of  discussion  that  a  whole  evening  would 
not  suffice  to  enumerate  them,  while  to  illustrate 
them  properly  would  seem  to  require  an  octavo 
volume  rather  than  a  talk  of  six  or  eight  minutes, 
especially  when  such  a  talk  comes  just  after 
dinner.  The  Amazulu  saying  which  you  have 
cited,  that  those  who  have  "  stuffed  bodies  "  can- 
not see  hidden  things,  seems  peculiarly  applicable 
to  any  attempt  to  discuss  the  mysteries  of  re- 
ligion at  the  present  moment ;  and,  after  the 
additional  warning  we  have  just  had  from  our 
good  friend  Mr.  Schurz,  I  hardly  know  whether  I 
ought  to  venture  to  approach  so  vast  a  theme. 
There  are  one  or  two  points  of  signal  importance, 
however,  to  which  I  may  at  least  call  attention 

1  Speech  at  the  farewell  dinner  given  to  Herbert  Spencer,  in  New 
York,  November  9,  1882. 
a  Hon.  W.  M.  Evarta. 


Evolution  and  Religion.  295 

for  a  moment.  It  is  a  matter  which  has  long 
since  taken  deep  hold  of  my  mind,  and  I  am  glad 
to  have  a  chance  to  say  something  about  it  on  so 
fitting  an  occasion.  We  have  met  here  this  even- 
ing to  do  homage  to  a  dear  and  noble  teacher  and 
friend,  and  it  is  well  that  we  should  choose  this 
time  to  recall  the  various  aspects  of  the  immor- 
tal work  by  which  he  has  earned  the  gratitude  of 
a  world.  The  work  which  Herbert  Spencer  has 
done  in  organizing  the  different  departments  of 
human  knowledge,  so  as  to  present  the  widest 
generalizations  of  all  the  sciences  in  a  new  and 
wonderful  light,  as  flowing  out  of  still  deeper  and 
wider  truths  concerning  the  universe  as  a  whole  ; 
the  great  number  of  profound  generalizations 
which  he  has  established  incidentally  to  the  pur- 
suit of  this  main  object ;  the  endlessly  rich  and 
suggestive  thoughts  which  he  has  thrown  out  in 
such  profusion  by  the  wayside  all  along  the  course 
of  this  great  philosophical  enterprise,  —  all  this 
work  is  so  manifest  that  none  can  fail  to  recognize 
it.  It  is  work  of  the  calibre  of  that  which  Aris- 
totle and  Newton  did.  Though  coming  in  this 
latter  age,  it  as  far  surpasses  their  work  in  its 
vastness  of  performance  as  the  railway  surpasses 
the  sedan-chair,  or  as  the  telegraph  surpasses  the 
carrier-pigeon. 


296  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

But  it  is  not  of  this  side  of  our  teacher's  work 
that  I  wish  to  speak,  but  of  a  side  of  it  that  has 
hitherto  met  with  less  general  recognition.  There 
are  some  people  who  seem  to  think  that  it  is  not 
enough  that  Mr.  Spencer  should  have  made  all 
these  priceless  contributions  to  human  knowledge, 
but  actually  complain  of  him  for  not  giving  us  a 
complete  and  exhaustive  system  of  theology  into 
the  bargain.  What  I  wish,  therefore,  to  point  out 
is  that  Mr.  Spencer's  work  on  the  side  of  religion 
will  be  seen  to  be  no  less  important  than  his  work 
on  the  side  of  science,  when  once  its  religious  im- 
plications shall  have  been  fully  and  consistently 
unfolded. 

If  we  look  at  all  the  systems  or  forms  of  relig- 
ion of  which  we  have  any  knowledge,  we  shall 
find  that  they  differ  in  many  superficial  features. 
They  differ  in  many  of  the  transcendental  doc- 
trines which  they  respectively  preach,  and  in 
many  of  the  rules  of  conduct  which  they  respec- 
tively lay  down  for  men's  guidance.  They  assert 
different  things  about  the  universe,  and  they  en- 
join or  prohibit  different  kinds  of  behaviour  on 
the  part  of  their  followers.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  which  to  many  Christians  is  the  most 
sacred  of  mysteries,  is  to  all  Mohammedans  the 
foulest  of  blasphemies.  The  Brahman's  conscience 


Evolution  and  Religion.  297 

would  be  more  troubled  if  he  were  to  kill  a  cow 
by  accident  than  if  he  were  to  swear  to  a  lie  or 
steal  a  purse.  The  Turk,  who  sees  no  wrong  in 
bigamy,  would  shrink  from  the  sin  of  eating  pork. 
But,  amid  all  such  surface  differences  we  find 
throughout  all  known  religions  two  points  of 
substantial  agreement.  And  these  two  points  of 
agreement  will  be  admitted  by  modern  civilized 
men  to  be  of  far  greater  importance  than  the 
innumerable  differences  of  detail.  All  religions 
agree  in  the  two  following  assertions,  one  of  which 
is  of  speculative  and  one  of  which  is  of  ethical 
import.  One  of  them  serves  to  sustain  and  har- 
monize our  thoughts  about  the  world  we  live  in 
and  our  place  in  that  world ;  the  other  serves  to 
uphold  us  in  our  efforts  to  do  each  what  we  can 
to  make  human  life  more  sweet,  more  full  of  good- 
ness and  beauty,  than  we  find  it.  The  first  of 
these  assertions  is  the  proposition  that  the  things 
and  events  of  the  world  do  not  exist  or  occur 
blindly  or  irrelevantly,  but  that  all,  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  time,  and  throughout  the 
farthest  sweep  of  illimitable  space,  are  connected 
together  as  the  orderly  manifestations  of  a  divine 
Power,  and  that  this  divine  Power  is  something 
outside  of  ourselves,  and  upon  it  our  own  exist- 
ence from  moment  to  moment  depends,  The 


298  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

second  of  these  assertions  is  the  proposition  that 
men  ought  to  do  certain  things,  and  ought  to  rfia 
f rain  from  doing  certain  other  things ;  and  that  the 
reason  why  some  things  are  wrong  to  do  and  other 
things  are  right  to  do  is  in  some  mysterious  but 
very  real  way  connected  with  the  existence  and 
nature  of  this  divine  Power,  which  reveals  itself 
in  every  great  and  every  tiny  thing,  without 
which  not  a  star  courses  in  its  mighty  orbit,  and 
not  a  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground.  Matthew 
Arnold  once  summed  up  these  two  propositions 
very  well,  when  he  defined  God  as  "  an  eternal 
Power,  not  ourselves,  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness." This  twofold  assertion,  that  there  is  an 
eternal  Power  that  is  not  ourselves,  and  that  this 
Power  makes  for  righteousness,  is  to  be  found, 
either  in  a  rudimentary  or  in  a  highly  developed 
state,  in  all  known  religions.  In  such  religions 
as  those  of  the  Eskimos  or  of  your  friends,  the 
Amazulus,  Mr.  President,  this  assertion  is  found 
in  a  rudimentary  shape  on  each  of  its  two  sides,  — 
the  speculative  side  and  the  ethical  side ;  in  such 
religions  as  Buddhism  or  Judaism,  it  is  found  in 
a  highly  developed  shape  on  both  its  sides.  But 
the  main  point  is  that  in  all  religions  you  find  it 
in  some  shape  or  other. 

I  said,  a  moment  ago,  that  modern  civilized  men 


Evolution  and  Religion.  299 

will  all  acknowledge  that  this  two-sided  assertion 
in  which  all  religions  agree  is  of  far  greater  im- 
portance than  any  of  the  superficial  points  in 
which  religions  differ.  It  is  really  of  much  more 
concern  to  us  that  there  is  an  eternal  Power,  not 
ourselves,  that  makes  for  righteousness,  than  that 
such  a  Power  is  onefold  or  threefold  in  its  meta- 
physical nature,  or  that  we  ought  not  to  play  cards 
on  Sunday  or  to  eat  meat  on  Friday.  No  one,  I 
believe,  will  deny  so  simple  and  clear  a  statement 
as  this.  But  it  is  not  only  we  modern  men,  who 
call  ourselves  enlightened,  that  will  agree  to  this. 
I  doubt  not  even  the  narrow-minded  bigots  of 
days  now  happily  gone  by  would  have  been  made 
to  agree  to  it,  if  they  could  have  had  some  dog- 
gedly persistent  Sokrates  to  cross-question  them. 
Calvin  was  willing  to  burn  Servetus  for  doubting 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  but  I  do  not  suppose 
that  even  Calvin  would  have  argued  that  the 
belief  in  God's  threefold  nature  was  more  funda- 
mental than  the  belief  in  his  existence  and  his 
goodness.  The  philosophical  error  with  him  was 
that  he  could  not  dissociate  the  less  important 
doctrine  from  the  more  important  doctrine,  and 
the  fate  of  the  latter  seemed  to  him  wrapped  up 
with  the  fate  of  the  former.  I  cite  this  merely  as 
a  typical  example.  What  men  in  past  times  have 


300  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

really  valued  in  their  religion  has  been  the  uni- 
versal twofold  assertion  that  there  is  a  God  who  is 
pleased  by  the  sight  of  the  just  man  and  is  angry 
with  the  wicked  every  day ;  and  when  men  have 
fought  with  one  another,  and  murdered  or  calum- 
niated one  another  for  heresy  about  the  Trin- 
ity or  about  eating  meat  on  Friday,  it  has  been 
because  they  have  supposed  belief  in  the  non- 
essential  doctrines  to  be  inseparably  connected 
with  belief  in  the  essential  doctrine.  In  spite  of 
all  this,  however,  it  is  true  that  in  the  mind  of 
the  uncivilized  man  the  great  central  truths  of  re- 
ligion are  so  densely  overlaid  with  hundreds  of 
trivial  notions  respecting  dogma  and  ritual  that 
his  perception  of  the  great  central  truths  is  ob- 
scure. (These  great  central  truths,  indeed,  need 
to  be  clothed  in  a  dress  of  little  rites  and  supersti- 
tions, in  order  to  take  hold  of  his  dull  and  un- 
trained intelligence.  But,  in  proportion  as  men 
become  more  civilized,  and  learn  to  think  more 
accurately,  and  to  take  wider  views  of  life,  just 
so  do  they  come  to  value  the  essential  truths  of 
religion  more  highly,  while  they  attach  less  and 
less  importance  to  superficial  details.) 

Having  thus  seen  what  is  meant  by  the  essen- 
tial truths  of  religion,  it  is  very  easy  to  see  what 
the  attitude  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  toward 


Evolution  and  Religion.  301 

these  essential  truths.  It  asserts  and  reiterates 
them  both  ;  and  it  asserts  them  not  as  dogmas 
handed  down  to  us  by  priestly  tradition,  not  as 
mysterious  intuitive  convictions  of  which  we  can 
render  no  intelligible  account  to  ourselves,  but  as 
scientific  truths  concerning  the  innermost  consti- 
tution of  the  universe,  truths  that  have  been  dis- 
closed by  observation  and  reflection,  like  other 
scientific  truths,  and  that  accordingly  harmonize 
naturally  and  easily  with  the  whole  body  of  our 
knowledge.  The  doctrine  of  evolution  asserts,  as 
the  widest  and  deepest  truth  which  the  study  of 
nature  can  disclose  to  us,  that  there  exists  a 
Power  to  which  no  limit  in  time  or  space  is  con- 
ceivable, and  that  all  the  phenomena  of  the  uni- 
verse, whether  they  be  what  we  call  material  or 
what  we  call  spiritual  phenomena,  are  manifesta- 
tions of  this  infinite  and  eternal  Power.  Now, 
this  assertion,  which  Mr.  Spencer  has  so  elabo- 
rately set  forth  as  a  scientific  truth,  —  nay,  as  the 
ultimate  truth  of  science,  as  the  truth  upon  which 
the  whole  structure  of  human  knowledge  philo- 
sophically rests,  —  this  assertion  is  identical  with 
the  assertion  of  an  eternal  Power,  not  ourselves, 
that  forms  the  speculative  basis  of  all  religions. 
When  Carlyle  speaks  of  the  universe  as  in  very 
truth  the  star-domed  city  of  God,  and  reminds  us 


302  Excursion*  of  an  Evolutionist. 

that  through  every  crystal  and  through  every 
grass-blade,  but  most  through  every  living  soul, 
the  glory  of  a  present  God  still  beams,  he  means 
pretty  much  the  same  thing  that  Mr.  Spencer 
means,  save  that  he  speaks  with  the  language  of 
poetry,  with  language  coloured  by  emotion,  and 
not  with  the  precise,  formal,  and  colourless  lan- 
guage of  science.  By  many  critics  who  forget  that 
names  are  but  the  counters  rather  than  the  hard 
money  of  thought,  objections  have  been  raised  to 
the  use  of  such  a  phrase  as  the  Unknowable 
whereby  to  describe  the  power  that  is  manifested 
in  every  event  of  the  universe.  Yet,  when  the 
Hebrew  prophet  declared  that  "by  Him  were 
laid  the  foundations  of  the  deep,"  but  reminded 
us,  "  Who  by  searching  can  find  Him  out  ? "  he 
meant  pretty  much  what  Mr.  Spencer  means  when 
he  speaks  of  a  Power  that  is  inscrutable  in  itself, 
yet  is  revealed  from  moment  to  moment  in  every 
throb  of  the  mighty  rhythmic  life  of  the  uni- 
verse. 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  last  and  most  im- 
portant point  of  all.  What  says  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  with  regard  to  the  ethical  side  of  this 
twofold  assertion  that  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  re- 
ligion ?  Though  we  cannot  fathom  the  nature  of 
the  inscrutable  Power  that  animates  the  world,  we 


.Evolution  and  Religion.  303 

know,  nevertheless,  a  great  many  things  that  it 
does.  Does  this  eternal  Power,  then,  work  for 
righteousness  ?  Is  there  a  divine  sanction  for  ho- 
liness and  a  divine  condemnation  for  sin  ?  Are 
the  principles  of  right  living  really  connected  with 
the  intimate  constitution  of  the  universe  ?  If  the 
answer  of  science  to  these  questions  be  affirma- 
tive, then  the  agreement  with  religion  is  com- 
plete, both  on  the  speculative  and  on  the  practi- 
cal sides ;  and  that  phantom  which  has  been  the 
abiding  terror  of  timid  and  superficial  minds  — 
that  phantom  of  the  hostility  between  religion 
and  science  —  is  exorcised  now  and  for  ever. 

Now  science  began  to  return  a  decisively  affirm- 
ative answer  to  such  questions  as  these,  when  it 
began,  with  Mr.  Spencer,  to  explain  moral  beliefs 
and  moral  sentiments  as  products  of  evolution. 
For  clearly,  when  you  say  of  a  moral  belief  or  a 
moral  sentiment  that  it  is  a  product  of  evolution, 
you  imply  that  it  is  something  which  the  universe 
through  untold  ages  has  been  labouring  to  bring 
forth,  and  you  ascribe  to  it  a  value  proportionate 
to  the  enormous  effort  that  it  has  cost  to  produce 
it.  Still  more,  when  with  Mr.  Spencer  we  study 
the  principles  of  right  living  as  part  and  parcel 
of  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  development  of  life 
upon  the  earth ;  when  we  see  that,  in  an  ultimate 


304  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

analysis,  that  is  right  which  tends  to  enhance  ful- 
ness of  life,  and  that  is  wrong  which  tends  to  de- 
tract from  fulness  of  life,  —  we  then  see  that  the 
distinction  between  right  and  wrong  is  rooted  in 
the  deepest  foundations  of  the  universe;  we  see 
that  the  very  same  forces,  subtle  and  exquisite  and 
profound,  which  brought  upon  the  scene  the  primal 
germs  of  life  and  caused  them  to  unfold,  which 
through  countless  ages  of  struggle  and  death  have 
cherished  the  life  that  could  live  more  perfectly 
and  destroyed  the  life  that  could  only  live  less  per- 
fectly, until  Humanity,  with  all  its  hopes  and  fears 
and  aspirations,  has  come  into  being  as  the  crown 
of  all  this  stupendous  work,  —  we  see  that  these 
very  same  subtle  and  exquisite  forces  have  wrought 
into  the  very  fibres  of  the  universe  those  princi- 
ples of  right  living  which  it  is  man's  highest  func- 
tion to  put  into  practice.  The  theoretical  sanc- 
tion thus  given  to  right  living  is  incomparably  the 
most  powerful  that  has  ever  been  assigned  in  any 
philosophy  of  ethics.  Human  responsibility  is 
made  more  strict  and  solemn  than  ever,  when  the 
eternal  Power  that  lives  in  every  event  of  the 
universe  is  thus  seen  to  be  in  the  deepest  possible 
sense  the  author  of  the  moral  law  that  should 
guide  our  lives,  and  in  obedience  to  which  lies  our 
only  guarantee  of  the  happiness  which  is  incor- 


Evolution  and  Religion.  305 

mptible,  —  which  neither  inevitable   misfortune 
nor  unmerited  obloquy  can  ever  take  away. 

I  have  here  but  barely  touched  upon  a  rich  and 
suggestive  topic.  When  this  subject  shall  once 
have  been  expounded  and  illustrated  with  due 
thoroughness,  —  as  I  earnestly  hope  it  will  be 
within  the  next  few  years,  —  then  I  am  sure  it 
will  be  generally  acknowledged  that  our  great 
teacher's  services  to  religion  have  been  no  less 
signal  than  his  services  to  science,  unparalleled 
as  these  have  been  in  all  the  history  of  the  world. 

November,  1882. 

20 


xn. 

THE  MEANING  OF  INFANCY.! 

WHAT  is  the  Meaning  of  Infancy?  What  is 
tL<3  meaning  of  the  fact  that  man  is  born  into  the 
world  more  helpless  than  any  other  creature,  and 
needs  for  a  much  longer  season  than  any  other 
living  thing  the  tender  care  and  wise  counsel  of 
his  elders?  It  is  one  of  the  most  familiar  of 
facts  that  man,  alone  among  animals,  exhibits  a 
capacity  for  progress.  That  man  is  widely  differ- 
ent from  other  animals  in  the  length  of  his  ado- 
lescence and  the  utter  helplessness  of  his  baby- 
hood, is  an  equally  familiar  fact.  Now  between 
these  two  commonplace  facts  is  there  any  con- 
nection ?  Is  it  a  mere  accident  that  the  creature 
which  is  distinguished  as  progressive  should  also 
be  distinguished  as  coming  slowly  to  maturity, 
or  is  there  a  reason  lying  deep  down  in  the  na- 
ture of  things  why  this  should  be  so  ?  I  think 

1  A  very  brief  restatement,  in  simple  language,  of  the  main  points 
of  the  theory  of  man's  origin  first  suggested  in  my  lectures  at  Har- 
vard University  in  1871,  and  worked  out  in  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Phi- 
losophy, part  II.,  chapters  xvi.,  xxi.,  and  xxii. 


The  Meaning  of  Infancy.  307 

it  can  be  shown,  with  very  few  words,  that  be- 
tween these  two  facts  there  is  a  connection  that 
is  deeply  inwrought  with  the  processes  by  which 
life  has  been  evolved  upon  the  earth.  It  can  be 
shown  that  man's  progressiveness  and  the  length 
of  his  infancy  are  but  two  sides  of  one  and  the 
same  fact ;  and  in  showing  this,  still  more  will 
appear.  It  will  appear  that  it  was  the  lengthen- 
ing of  infancy  which  ages  ago  gradually  converted 
our  forefathers  from  brute  creatures  into  human 
creatures.  It  is  babyhood  that  has  made  man 
what  he  is.  The  simple  unaided  operation  of 
natural  selection  could  never  have  resulted  in  the 
origination  of  the  human  race.  Natural  selection 
might  have  gone  on  forever  improving  the  breed 
of  the  highest  animal  in  many  ways,  but  it  could 
never  unaided  have  started  the  process  of  civiliza- 
tion or  have  given  to  man  those  peculiar  attri- 
butes in  virtue  of  which  it  has  been  well  said  that 
the  difference  between  him  and  the  highest  of 
apes  immeasurably  transcends  in  value  the  differ- 
ence between  an  ape  and  a  blade  of  grass.  In 
order  to  bring  about  that  wonderful  event,  the 
Creation  of  Man,  natural  selection  had  to  call  in 
the  aid  of  other  agencies,  and  the  chief  of  these 
agencies  was  the  gradual  lengthening  of  baby- 
hood. 


308          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Such  is  the  point  which  I  wish  to  illustrate  in 
few  words,  and  to  indicate  some  of  its  bearings  on 
the  history  of  human  progress.  Let  us  first  ob- 
serve what  it  was  that  lengthened  the  infancy  of 
the  highest  animal,  for  then  we  shall  be  the  bet- 
ter able  to  understand  the  character  of  the  pro 
digious  effects  which  this  infancy  has  wrought. 
A  few  familiar  facts  concerning  the  method  in 
which  men  learn  how  to  do  things  will  help  us 
here. 

When  we  begin  to  learn  to  play  the  piano,  we 
have  to  devote  much  time  and  thought  to  the  ad- 
justment and  movement  of  our  fingers  and  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  vast  and  complicated  mul- 
titude of  symbols  which  make  up  the  printed 
page  of  music  that  stands  before  us.  For  a  long 
time,  therefore,  our  attempts  are  feeble  and  stam- 
mering and  they  require  the  full  concentrated 
power  of  the  mind.  Yet  a  trained  pianist  will 
play  a  new  piece  of  music  at  sight,  and  perhaps 
have  so  much  attention  to  spare  that  he  can  talk 
with  you  at  the  same  time.  What  an  enormous 
number  of  mental  acquisitions  have  in  this  case 
become  almost  instinctive  or  automatic !  It  is 
just  so  in  learning  a  foreign  language,  and  it  was 
just  the  same  when  in  childhood  we  learned  to 
walk,  to  talk,  and  to  write.  It  is  just  the  same, 


The  Meaning  of  Infancy.  309 

too,  in  learning  to  think  about  abstruse  subjects. 
What  at  first  strains  the  attention  to  the  utmost, 
and  often  wearies  us,  comes  at  last  to  be  done 
without  effort  and  almost  unconsciously.  Great 
minds  thus  travel  over  vast  fields  of  thought  with 
an  ease  of  which  they  are  themselves  unaware. 
Dr.  Nathaniel  Bowditch  once  said  that  in  trans- 
lating the  "Me'canique  Celeste,"  he  had  come 
upon  formulas  which  Laplace  introduced  with  the 
word  "  obviously,"  where  it  took  nevertheless 
many  days  of  hard  study  to  supply  the  interme- 
diate steps  through  which  that  transcendent  mind 
had  passed  with  one  huge  leap  of  inference.  At 
some  time  in  his  youth  no  doubt  Laplace  had  to 
think  of  these  things,  just  as  Rubinstein  had 
once  to  think  how  his  fingers  should  be  placed  on 
the  keys  of  the  piano ;  but  what  was  once  the  ob- 
ject of  conscious  attention  comes  at  last  to  be 
wellnigh  automatic,  while  the  flight  of  the  con- 
scious mind  goes  on  ever  to  higher  and  vaster 
themes. 

Let  us  now  take  a  long  leap  from  the  highest 
level  of  human  intelligence  to  the  mental  life  of 
a  turtle  or  a  codfish.  In  what  does  the  mental 
life  of  such  creatures  consist  ?  It  consists  of  a 
few  simple  acts  mostly  concerned  with  the  secur- 
ing of  food  and  the  avoiding  of  danger,  and  these 


310  ^Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

few  simple  acts  are  repeated  with  unvarying  mo- 
notony during  the  whole  lifetime  of  these  crea- 
tures. Consequently  these  acts  are  performed 
with  great  ease  and  are  attended  with  very  little 
consciousness,  and  moreover  the  capacity  to  per- 
form them  is  transmitted  from  parent  to  offspring 
as  completely  as  the  capacity  of  the  stomach  to  di- 
gest food  is  transmitted.  In  all  animals  the  new- 
born stomach  needs  but  the  contact  with  food  in 
order  to  begin  digesting,  and  the  new-born  lungs 
need  but  the  contact  with  air  in  order  to  begin  to 
breathe.  The  capacity  for  performing  these  per- 
petually-repeated visceral  actions  is  transmitted  in 
perfection.  All  the  requisite  nervous  connections 
are  fully  established  during  the  brief  embryonic 
existence  of  each  creature.  In  the  case  of  lower 
animals  it  is  almost  as  much  so  with  the  few  sim- 
ple actions  which  make  up  the  creature's  mental 
life.  The  bird  known  as  the  fly-catcher  no  sooner 
breaks  the  egg  than  it  will  snap  at  and  catch  a 
fly.  This  action  is  not  so  very  simple,  but  be- 
cause it  is  something  the  bird  is  always  doing, 
being  indeed  one  out  of  the  very  few  things  that 
this  bird  ever  does,  the  nervous  connections  need- 
ful for  doing  it  are  all  established  before  birth, 
and  nothing  but  the  presence  of  the  fly  is  required 
to  set  the  operation  going. 


TJie  Meaning  of  Infancy.  311 

With  such  creatures  as  the  codfish,  the  turtle, 
or  the  fly-catcher,  there  is  accordingly  nothing 
that  can  properly  be  called  infancy.  With  them 
the  sphere  of  education  is  extremely  limited. 
They  get  their  education  before  they  are  born. 
In  other  words,  heredity  does  everything  for 
them,  education  nothing.  The  career  of  the  in- 
dividual is  predetermined  by  the  careers  of  his  an- 
cestors, and  he  can  do  almost  nothing  to  vary  it. 
The  life  of  such  creatures  is  conservatism  cut  and 
dried,  and  there  is  nothing  progressive  about 
them. 

In  what  I  just  said  I  left  an  "almost."  There 
is  a  great  deal  of  saving  virtue  in  that  little  ad- 
verb. Doubtless  even  animals  low  in  the  scale 
possess  some  faint  traces  of  educability  ;  but  they 
are  so  very  slight  that  it  takes  geologic  ages  to 
produce  an  appreciable  result.  In  all  the  innu- 
merable wanderings,  fights,  upturnings  and  cata- 
clysms of  the  earth's  stupendous  career,  each 
creature  has  been  summoned  under  penalty  of 
death  to  use  what  little  wit  he  may  have  had, 
and  the  slightest  trace  of  mental  flexibility  is  of 
such  priceless  value  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
that  natural  selection  must  always  have  seized 
upon  it,  and  sedulously  hoarded  and  transmitted 
it  for  coming  generations  to  strengthen  and  in- 


312  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

crease.  With  the  lapse  of  geologic  time  the  up- 
per grades  of  animal  intelligence  have  doubtless 
been  raised  higher  and  higher  through  natural 
selection.  The  warm-blooded  mammals  and  birds 
of  to-day  no  doubt  surpass  the  cold-blooded  di- 
nosaurs of  the  Jurassic  age  in  mental  qualities  as 
they  surpass  them  in  physical  structure.  From 
the  codfish  and  turtle  of  ancient  family  to  the 
modern  lion,  dog,  and  monkey,  it  is  a  very  long 
step  upward.  The  mental  life  of  a  warm-blooded 
animal  is  a  very  different  affair  from  that  of  rep- 
tiles and  fishes.  A  squirrel  or  a  bear  does  a  good 
many  things  in  the  course  of  his  life.  He  meets 
various  vicissitudes  in  various  ways  ;  he  has  ad- 
ventures. The  actions  he  performs  are  so  com- 
plex and  so  numerous  that  they  are  severally  per- 
formed with  less  frequency  than  the  few  actions 
performed  by  the  codfish.  The  requisite  nervous 
connections  are  accordingly  not  fully  established 
before  birth.  There  is  not  time  enough.  The 
nervous  connections  needed  for  the  visceral  move- 
ments and  for  the  few  simple  instinctive  actions 
get  organized,  and  then  the  creature  is  born  be- 
fore he  has  learned  how  to  do  all  the  things  his 
parents  could  do.  A  good  many  of  his  ner- 
vous connections  are  not  yet  formed,  they  are 
only  formable.  Accordingly  he  is  not  quite  able 


The  Meaning  of  Infancy.  313 

to  take  care  of  himself;  he  must  for  a  time  be 
watched  and  nursed.  All  mammals  and  most 
birds  have  thus  a  period  of  babyhood  that  is  not 
very  long,  but  is  on  the  whole  longest  with  the 
most  intelligent  creatures.  It  is  especially  long 
with  the  higher  monkeys,  and  among  the  man- 
like apes  it  becomes  so  long  as  to  be  strikingly 
suggestive.  An  infant  orang-outang,  captured  by 
Mr.  Wallace,  was  still  a  helpless  baby  at  the  age 
of  three  months,  unable  to  feed  itself,  to  walk 
without  aid,  or  to  grasp  objects  with  precision. 

But  this  period  of  helplessness  has  to  be  viewed 
under  another  aspect.  It  is  a  period  of  plasticity. 
The  creature's  career  is  no  longer  exclusively 
determined  by  heredity.  There  is  a  period  after 
birth  when  its  character  can  be  slightly  modified 
by  what  happens  to  it  after  birth,  that  is,  by  its 
experience  as  an  individual.  It  becomes  edu- 
cable.  It  is  no  longer  necessary  for  each  genera- 
tion to  be  exactly  like  that  which  has  preceded. 
A  door  is  opened  through  which  the  capacity  for 
progress  can  enter.  Horses  and  dogs,  bears  and 
elephants,  parrots  and  monkeys,  are  all  teachable 
to  some  extent,  and  we  have  even  heard  of  a 
learned  pig.  Of  learned  asses  there  has  been  no 
lack  in  the  world. 

But  this  educability  of   the  higher   mammals 


314          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

and  birds  is  after  all  quite  limited.  By  the  be- 
ginnings of  infancy  the  door  for  progressiveness 
was  set  ajar,  but  it  was  not  all  at  once  thrown 
wide  open.  Conservatism  still  continued  in  fash- 
ion. One  generation  of  cattle  is  much  like  an- 
other. It  would  be  easy  for  foxes  to  learn  to 
climb  trees,  and  many  a  fox  might  have  saved 
his  life  by  doing  so ;  yet  quickwitted  as  he  is, 
this  obvious  device  never  seems  to  have  occurred 
to  Reynard.  Among  slightly  teachable  mammals, 
however,  there  is  one  group  more  teachable  than 
the  rest.  Monkeys,  with  their  greater  power  of 
handling  things,  have  also  more  inquisitiveness 
and  more  capacity  for  sustained  attention  than 
any  other  mammals  ;  and  the  higher  apes  are 
fertile  in  varied  resources.  The  orang-outang 
and  gorilla  are  for  this  reason  dreaded  by  other 
animals,  and  roam  the  undisputed  lords  of  their 
native  forests.  They  have  probably  approached 
the  critical  point  where  variations  in  intelligence, 
always  important,  have  come  to  be  supremely 
important,  so  as  to  be  seized  by  natural  selection 
in  preference  to  variations  in  physical  constitu- 
tion. At  some  remote  epoch  of  the  past  —  we 
cannot  say  just  when  or  how  —  our  half-human 
forefathers  reached  and  passed  this  critical  point, 
and  forthwith  their  varied  struggles  began  age 


The  Meaning  of  Infancy.  315 

after  age  to  result  in  the  preservation  of  bigger 
and  better  brains,  while  the  rest  of  their  bodies 
changed  but  little.  This  particular  work  of  nat- 
ural selection  must  have  gone  on  for  an  enor- 
mous length  of  time,  and  as  its  result  we  see  that 
while  man  remains  anatomically  much  like  an 
ape,  he  has  acquired  a  vastly  greater  brain  with 
all  that  this  implies.  Zoologically  the  distance  is 
small  between  man  and  the  chimpanzee;  psycho- 
logically it  has  become  so  great  as  to  be  im- 
measurable. 

But  this  steady  increase  of  intelligence,  as  our 
forefathers  began  to  become  human,  carried  with 
it  a  steady  prolongation  of  infancy.  As  mental 
life  became  more  complex  and  various,  as  the 
things  to  be  learned  kept  ever  multiplying,  less 
and  less  could  be  done  before  birth,  more  and 
more  must  be  left  to  be  done  in  the  earlier  years 
of  life.  So  instead  of  being  born  with  a  few 
simple  capacities  thoroughly  organized,  man  came 
at  last  to  be  born  with  the  germs  of  many  com- 
plex capacities  which  were  reserved  to  be  un- 
folded and  enhanced  or  checked  and  stifled  by 
the  incidents  of  personal  experience  in  each  in- 
dividual. In  this  simple  yet  wonderful  way  there 
has  been  provided  for  man  a  long  period  during 
which  his  mind  is  plastic  and  malleable,  and 


316  Excursions  c  '  an  Evolutionist. 

the  length  of  this  perod  has  increased  with  civil- 
ization until  it  now  covers  nearly  one  third  of  our 
lives.  It  is  not  that  o'ir  inherited  tendencies  and 
aptitudes  are  not  still  the  main  thing.  It  is  only 
that  we  have  at  last  acquired  great  power  to  mod- 
ify them  by  training,  s  3  that  progress  may  go  on 
with  ever-increasing  sureness  and  rapidity. 

In  thus  pointing  out  the  causes  of  infancy,  we 
have  at  the  same  time  witnessed  some  of  its  ef- 
fects. One  effect,  of  stupendous  importance,  re- 
mains to  be  pointed  oat.  As  helpless  babyhood 
came  more  and  more  to  depend  on  parental  care, 
the  correlated  feelings  were  developed  on  the 
part  of  parents,  and  the  fleeting  sexual  relations 
established  among  mammals  in  general  were 
gradually  exchanged  for  permanent  relations.  A 
cow  feels  strong  maternal  affection  for  her  nurs- 
ing calf,  but  after  the  calf  is  fully  grown,  though 
doubtless  she  distinguishes  it  from  other  mem- 
bers of  the  herd,  it  is  not  clear  that  she  enter- 
tains for  it  any  parental  feeling.  But  with  our 
half-human  forefathers  it  is  not  difficult  to  see 
how  infancy  extending  over  several  years  must 
have  tended  gradually  to  strengthen  the  relations 
of  the  children  to  the  mother,  and  eventually  to 
both  parents,  and  thus  give  rise  to  the  permanent 
organization  of  the  family.  When  this  step  was 


The  Meaning  of  Infancy.  317 

accomplished  we  may  say  that  the  Creation  of 
Man  had  been  achieved.  For  through  the  organ- 
ization of  the  family  has  arisen  that  of  the  clan 
or  tribe,  which  has  formed,  as  it  were,  the  cellu- 
lar tissue  out  of  which  the  most  complex  human 
society  has  come  to  be  constructed.  And  out  of 
that  subordination  of  individual  desires  to  the 
common  interest,  which  first  received  a  definite 
direction  when  the  family  was  formed,  there  grew 
the  rude  beginnings  of  human  morality. 

It  was  thus  through  the  lengthening  of  his  in- 
fancy that  the  highest  of  animals  came  to  be 
Man,  —  a  creature  with  definite  social  relation- 
ships and  with  an  element  of  plasticity  in  his  or- 
ganization such  as  has  come  at  last  to  make  his 
difference  from  all  other  animals  a  difference  in 
kind.  Here  at  last  there  had  come  upon  the 
scene  a  creature  endowed  with  the  capacity  for 
progress,  and  a  new  chapter  was  thus  opened  in 
the  history  of  creation.  But  it  was  not  to  be 
expected  that  man  should  all  at  once  learn  how 
to  take  advantage  of  this  capacity.  Nature, 
which  is  said  to  make  no  jumps,  surely  did  not 
jump  here.  The  whole  history  of  civilization, 
indeed,  is  largely  the  history  of  man's  awkward 
and  stumbling  efforts  to  avail  himself  of  this 
flexibility  of  mental  constitution  with  which  God 


318          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

has  endowed  him.  For  many  a  weary  age  the 
progress  men  achieved  was  feeble  and  halting. 
Though  it  had  ceased  to  be  physically  necessary 
for  each  generation  to  tread  exactly  in  the  steps 
of  its  predecessor,  yet  the  circumstances  of  prim- 
itive society  long  made  it  very  difficult  for  any 
deviation  to  be  effected.  For  the  tribes  of  prim- 
itive men  were  perpetually  at  war  with  each 
other,  and  their  methods  of  tribal  discipline  were 
military  methods.  To  allow  much  freedom  of 
thought  would  be  perilous,  and  the  whole  tribe 
was  supposed  to  be  responsible  for  the  words  and 
deeds  of  each  of  its  members.  The  tribes  most 
rigorous  in  this  stern  discipline  were  those  which 
killed  out  tribes  more  loosely  organized,  and  thus 
survived  to  hand  down  to  coming  generations 
their  ideas  and  their  methods.  From  this  state 
of  things  an  intense  social  conservatism  was  be- 
gotten, —  a  strong  disposition  on  the  part  of  soci- 
ety to  destroy  the  flexible-minded  individual  who 
dares  to  think  and  behave  differently  from  his 
fellows.  During  the  past  three  thousand  years 
much  has  been  done  to  weaken  this  conservatism 
by  putting  an  end  to  the  state  of  things  which 
produced  it.  As  great  and  strong  societies  have 
arisen,  as  the  sphere  of  warfare  has  diminished 
while  the  sphere  of  industry  has  enlarged,  the 


The  Meaning  of  Infancy.  319 

need  for  absolute  conformity  has  ceased  to  be  felt, 
while  the  advantages  of  freedom  and  variety 
come  to  be  ever  more  clearly  apparent.  At  a  late 
stage  of  civilization,  the  flexible  or  plastic  society 
acquires  even  a  military  advantage  over  the  soci- 
ety that  is  more  rigid,  as  in  the  struggle  between 
French  and  English  civilization  for  primacy  in 
the  world.  In  our  own  country,  the  political 
birth  of  which  dates  from  the  triumph  of  Eng- 
land in  that  mighty  struggle,  the  element  of  plas- 
ticity in  man's  nature  is  more  thoroughly  heeded, 
more  fully  taken  account  of,  than  in  any  other 
community  known  to  history  ;  and  herein  lies  the 
chief  potency  of  our  promise  for  the  future.  We 
have  come  to  the  point  where  we  are  beginning 
to  see  that  we  may  safely  depart  from  unreason- 
ing routine,  and,  with  perfect  freedom  of  think- 
ing in  science  and  in  religion,  with  new  methods 
of  education  that  shall  train  our  children  to 
think  for  themselves  while  they  interrogate  Na- 
ture with  a  courage  and  an  insight  that  shall 
grow  ever  bolder  and  keener,  we  may  ere  long  be 
able  fully  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  fact  that  we 
come  into  the  world  as  little  children  with  unde- 
veloped powers  wherein  lie  latent  all  the  bound- 
less possibilities  of  a  higher  and  grander  Human- 
ity than  has  yet  been  seen  upon  the  earth. 
October.  1883. 


xm. 

A  UNIVERSE  OF  MIND-STUFF. 

THE  author  of  these  two  remarkable  volumes l 
died  last  March  in  the  island  of  Madeira,  at  the 
early  age  of  thirty-three,  the  victim,  apparently, 
of  what  is  called  "  overwork,"  —  that  is,  of  work 
long  pursued  in  utter  disregard  of  the  necessary 
limitations  and  imperative  requirements  of  the 
human  system.  Never,  perhaps,  has  the  demon 
of  overwork  carried  off  a  more  illustrious  victim. 
Never,  perhaps,  has  it  been  more  strikingly  shown 
of  how  little  avail  is  the  mere  knowledge  of  hy= 
giene  in  insuring  obedience  to  its  precepts.  No 
one  understood  better  than  Clifford  what  are  pop- 
ularly known  as  the  laws  of  health ;  no  one  had 
fathomed  more  deeply  or  discussed  more  lucidly 
the  dependence  of  the  mind  upon  the  body  ;  no 
one  in  our  time  has  been  better  able  to  apply  in 
the  physiological  domain  the  most  accurate  and 
definite  conceptions  of  the  relations  of  energy  to 

1  Lectures  and  Essays.  By  the  late  William  Kingdon  Clifford, 
F.  R.  S.  Edited  by  Leslie  Stephen  and  Frederick  Pollock.  2  vols. 
8vo.  London:  Macmillan  &  Co.  1879. 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff.  321 

work.  Yet  from  all  I  have  been  able  to  learn  re- 
garding Clifford's  intellectual  life,  it  would  seem 
to  have  been  at  all  times  carried  on  with  an  in- 
tensely passionate,  irrepressible  zeal,  as  regard- 
less of  all  physical  laws  as  if  the  mind  were  not 
merely  a  distinct  but  an  independent  entity,  un- 
hampered even  during  the  present  life  by  physical 
conditions. 

I  cite  this  singular  discrepancy  between  knowl- 
edge and  practice  on  account  of  its  intrinsic  in- 
terest, not  in  reproof  of  the  course  of  a  friend 
whose  loss  I  must  ever  mourn.  Admitting,  with 
Mr.  Spencer,  that  one  is  morally  bound  so  to 
treat  the  body  as  not  "  in  any  way  to  diminish  the 
fulness  or  vigour  of  its  vitality,"  one  sees  at  the 
same  time  that,  as  the  world  is  now  constituted, 
emergencies  often  arise  which  subordinate  to 
higher  duties  the  duty  of  keeping  oneself  well. 
To  save  human  life  I  may  jump  into  a  freezing 
river,  though  an  ice-water  bath  be  not  recom- 
mended by  hygienic  advisers.  So  one  sympa- 
thizes with  the  heroic  sense  of  duty  which  often 
leads  the  scholar  to  toil  early  and  late,  and  long 
after  weariness  has  set  in,  in  the  performance  of 
work  which  is  expected  of  him,  —  though  in 
many  cases  the  work  itself  may  be  obscure  in 
tame  and  the  taskmaster  thankless  and  treacher- 
21 


322  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ous.  For  my  own  part  I  sympathize  keenly,  too, 
with  a  very  different  feeling,  —  with  that  glorious 
exuberance  of  vital  energy  which  in  youthful  days 
leads  one  far  on  into  the  night,  working  with  a 
kind  of  sacred  fury  to  seize  and  secure  the  sud' 
den  glimpses  of  the  fairyland  of  scientific  truth 
or  literary  beauty  ere  drowsy  memory  shall  let 
them  slip  and  fade  away.  I  think  it  very  likely 
that  in  many  such  cases  a  systematic  self-repres- 
sion, in  deference  to  hygienic  considerations, 
might  be  just  enough  to  clip  down  the  brilliant 
discoverer  or  original  thinker  into  a  mere  scien 
tific  or  literary  prig.  The  secrets  of  Nature  and 
of  Art  are  not  to  be  won  without  struggles ;  and 
in  the  serene  regions  of  philosophic  meditation, 
no  less  than  in  the  turmoil  of  practical  life,  the 
highest  results  are  often  accomplished  by  tho^e 
who  work  with  desperate  energy  quite  regardless 
of  self.  Generous  feelings  of  this  sort  have  no 
doubt  frequently  urged  great  thinkers,  like  Clif- 
ford, fatally  to  overtask  their  physical  resources  ; 
and  such  mistakes  are  peculiarly  facilitated  by  the 
accommodating  disposition  of  that  faithful  servant 
the  brain,  which  in  men  of  highly-strung  nervous 
temperament  is  but  too  ready  to  keep  at  its  work 
without  protest,  as  a  thoroughbred  horse  will  run 
till  it  drops. 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff.  323 

In  Clifford's  case  this  prodigious  enthusiasm  for 
work,  joined  with  an  inherited  weakness  of  con- 
stitution, has  robbed  the  world  of  one  of  its  most 
valuable  lives.  But  though  his  life  was  brief,  it 
was  wonderfully  rich  in  achievement  no  less  than 
in  promise.  He  had  discerned  more,  and  dis- 
cerned it  more  clearly,  in  his  score  and  a  half  of 
years  than  most  men  discern  in  fourscore.  In 
pure  mathematics  he  was  admitted,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five,  to  be  one  of  the  first  five  or  six  orig- 
inal thinkers  of  Europe.  I  say  this  from  hear- 
say, for  my  own  knowledge  of  the  subject  is  not 
sufficient  to  enable  me  to  comprehend  his  mathe- 
matical achievements  or  to  appreciate  their  bear- 
ing. But  the  power  and  acuteness  with  which  he 
treated  questions  in  physics  and  in  general  philos- 
ophy were  very  marvellous,  and  his  suggestiveness 
was  so  great  as  already  to  have  entitled  him  to  a 
high  rank  among  contemporary  philosophers.  It 
was  impossible  for  him  to  touch  upon  any  subject 
without  throwing  some  new  light  upon  it,  for  the 
mere  restatement  of  an  old  truth  in  his  powerful 
and  luminous  language  was  sure  to  invest  it  with 
fresh  and  beautiful  significance.  His  skill  in  sci- 
entific exposition  was,  accordingly,  very  remark- 
able. For  taking  the  most  hopelessly  complicated 
and  abstruse  subjects  and  making  them  seem  per- 


324  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

fectly  simple  and  almost  self-evident  to  ordinary 
minds,  I  do  not  know  who  could  be  found  to  com- 
pare with  him.  This  rare  power  he  owed  largely 
to  the  extreme  vividness  of  his  imagination. 
What  he  saw  "  with  his  mind's  eye,"  he  saw  as 
accurately  and  distinctly  as  only  keen  observers 
see  things  when  they  look  with  the  physical  eye. 
This  is  welt  illustrated  in  his  lecture  on  "Atoms," 
and  in  various  passages  where  he  has  occasion  to 
allude  to  the  intimate  constitution  of  matter,  to 
solidity,  liquidity,  quanti valence,  and  so  on.  Peo- 
ple generally,  when  they  talk  about  atoms,  think 
only  of  very  little  particles,  without  having  in 
mind  anything  about  their  various  shapes  and 
modes  of  behaviour.  Even  scientific  men,  who 
get  on  well  enough  by  the  aid  of  established  for- 
mulas, now  and  then  betray  a  similar  barrenness 
of  conception  when  some  novel  point  comes  up 
for  discussion.  But  Clifford  would  describe  a 
cluster  of  atoms  with  as  much  minuteness  and  as 
much  animation  as  a  fashionable  lady  would  dis- 
play in  describing  the  gorgeous  costumes  of  last 
night's  ball.  Take  the  air  of  this  room,  for  ex- 
ample, which  does  not  fill  up  all  the  space  in  the 
room,  but  is  composed  of  a  prodigious  number  of 
discrete  particles  of  two  sorts,  —  one  sort  called 
molecules  of  oxygen,  the  other  sort  called  mole- 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff.  325 

cules  of  nitrogen.  "  These  small  molecules,"  says 
Clifford,  "  are  not  at  rest  in  the  room,  but  are  fly- 
ing about  in  all  directions  with  a  mean  velocity  of 
seventeen  miles  a  minute.  They  do  not  fly  far  in 
one  direction  ;  but  any  particular  molecule,  after 
going  over  an  incredibly  short  distance  —  the 
measure  of  which  has  been  made  —  meets  an- 
other, not  exactly  plump,  but  a  little  on  one  side ; 
so  that  they  behave  to  one  another  somewhat  in 
the  same  way  as  two  people  do  who  are  dancing 
Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  —  they  join  hands,  swing 
around,  and  then  fly  away  in  different  directions. 
All  these  molecules  are  constantly  changing  the 
direction  of  each  other's  motion  ;  they  are  flying 
about  with  very  different  velocities,  although,  as 
I  have  said,  their  mean  velocity  is  about  seventeen 
miles  a  minute.  If  the  velocities  were  all  marked 
off  on  a  scale,  they  would  be  found  distributed 
about  the  mean  velocity  just  as  shots  are  distrib- 
uted about  a  mark.  If  a  great  many  shots  are 
fired  at  a  target,  the  hits  will  be  found  thickest  at 
the  bull's-eye,  and  they  will  gradually  diminish  as 
we  go  away  from  that,  according  to  a  certain  law 
which  is  called  the  law  of  error.  It  was  first 
stated  clearly  by  Laplace ;  and  it  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  consequences  of  theory  that  the 
molecules  of  a  gas  have  their  velocities  distributed 


326  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

among  them  precisely  according  to  this  law  of 
error.  In  the  case  of  a  liquid,  it  is  believed  that 
the  state  of  things  is  quite  different.  We  said  that 
in  the  gas  the  molecules  are  moved  in  straight 
lines,  and  that  it  is  only  during  a  small  portion  of 
their  motion  that  they  are  deflected  by  other 
molecules ;  but  in  a  liquid  we  may  say  that  the 
molecules  go  about  as  if  they  were  dancing  the 
grand  chain  in  the  Lancers.  Every  molecule  after 
parting  company  with  one  finds  another,  and  so 
is  constantly  going  about  in  a  Curved  path,  and 
never  sent  quite  clear  away  from  the  sphere  of 
action  of  the  surrounding  molecules.  But,  not- 
withstanding that,  all  molecules  in  a  liquid  are 
constantly  changing  their  places,  and  it  is  for  that 
reason  that  diffusion  takes  place  in  the  liquid.  .  .  . 
In  the  case  of  a  solid,  quite  a  different  thing  takes 
place.  In  a  solid  every  molecule  has  a  place 
which  it  keeps  ;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  not  at  rest  any 
more  than  a  molecule  of  a  liquid  or  a  gas,  but  it 
has  a  certain  mean  position  which  it  is  always 
vibrating  about  and  keeping  fairly  near  to,  and 
it  is  kept  from  losing  that  position  by  the  action 
of  the  surrounding  molecules."  1 

Such  scientific  exposition  as  this  is  as  beautiful 
as  poetry.     In  reading  it  one  feels  how  the  glory 
i  Vol.  i.  p.  194. 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff.  327 

and  beauty  of  Nature  are  immeasurably  enhanced 
for  the  philosopher  who  can  thus  with  inward 
vision  distinctly  grasp  objects  and  relations  too 
subtile  for  the  eye  of  sense  in  any  wise  to  discern. 
This  same  remarkable  lucidity  is  exhibited  by 
Clifford  in  the  treatment  of  metaphysical  prob- 
lems. In  some  respects  the  most  striking  dis- 
cussion in  the  present  volume  is  contained  in  the 
essay  on  "  The  Nature  of  Things-in-themselves," 
where  some  of  the  latest  suggestions  of  anti- 
materialistic  philosophy  are  very  forcibly  pre- 
sented. Starting  from  the  impregnable  Berkeleian 
position  that  the  material  world  of  which  I  am 
conscious  exists  only  as  an  organized  series  of 
changes  in  my  consciousness,  Clifford  introduces 
a  very  interesting  and  suggestive  distinction  be- 
tween the  objective  and  the  ejective  elements  in 
cognition.  Our  inferences  concerning  the  material 
world  are  all  inferences  concerning  either  some 
actual  or  some  potential  states  of  consciousness. 
When  I  describe  the  moon  at  which  I  am  looking, 
I  am  describing  merely  a  plexus  of  optical  sensa- 
tions with  sundry  revived  states  of  mind  linked 
by  various  laws  of  association  with  the  optical 
sensations.  When  I  say  that  the  moon  existed 
before  I  was  born,  I  only  mean  that  if  I  had  been 
alive  a  century  ago  and  stood  here  and  looked  up 


328          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

as  I  am  now  doing,  I  should  have  had  a  similar 
plexus  of  optical  sensations  and  revived  states  of 
mind  to  describe.  Obviously  there  is  nothing  else 
which  I  can  mean ;  in  any  statement  which  I  may 
make  concerning  the  world  of  matter,  I  can  refer 
only  to  things  which  either  are,  or  may  be,  or 
might  have  been,  objects  in  my  consciousness. 
But  it  is  quite  otherwise  when  I  make  statements 
regarding  the  existence  of  minds  other  than  my 
own.  "  When  I  come  to  the  conclusion,"  says 
Clifford,  "  that  you  are  conscious,  and  that  there 
are  objects  in  your  consciousness  similar  to  those 
in  mine,  I  am  not  inferring  any  actual  or  possible 
feelings  of  my  own,  but  your  feelings,  which  are 
not,  and  cannot  by  any  possibility  become,  objects 
in  my  consciousness."  In  the  very  act  of  inferring 
that  you  have  feelings  like  mine,  some  of  which 
you  class  as  objective,  and  call  the  outer  world, 
while  others  you  class  as  subjective,  — in  the  very 
act  of  inferring  this  I  recognize  these  inferred 
feelings  of  yours  as  something  outside  of  myself, 
as  something  which  is  not  a  part  of  myself  and 
never  could  be.  These  inferred  existences  Clifford 
calls  ejects,  "  things  thrown  out  of  my  conscious- 
ness, to  distinguish  them  from  objects,  things 
presented  in  my  consciousness,  —  phenomena." 
My  conception  of  you  is  "a  rough  picture  of 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff:  329 

the  whole  aggregate  of  my  consciousness,  under 
imagined  circumstances  like  yours ; "  and  this  con- 
ception—  unlike  my  conception  of  the  moon,  or 
of  your  face  —  implies  the  existence  of  something 
that  can  never  in  any  way  become  a  part  of  my 
consciousness.  Your  face,  while  I  am  looking  at 
you,  is  an  object  in  my  consciousness ;  but  your 
consciousness  can  never  be  an  object  in  mine,  —  it 
is  an  eject,  something  entirely  outside  of  my  con- 
sciousness. And  so,  too,  your  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings, the  objects  in  your  mind,  are  to  me  ejects. 

Now  my  belief  in  the  existence  of  ejects  affects 
essentially  my  conception  of  objects.  As  a  simple 
object,  the  table  is  but  a  group  of  my  states  of 
consciousness ;  but  when  I  speak  to  you  of  the 
table,  I  infer  the  existence  in  you  of  a  similar 
group  of  states  of  consciousness,  —  and  this  group 
is  an  eject.  When  I  think  or  speak  of  the  table, 
I  bind  up  together  the  individual  object  as  it 
exists  in  my  mind  with  an  indefinite  number  of 
ejects  assumed  to  resemble  it ;  and  thus  is  formed 
the  complex  conception  which  Clifford  calls  the 
social  object,  —  that  is,  the  conception  of  the  table 
as  an  object  in  human  consciousness  in  general. 
There  now  ensues  an  ingenious  and  interesting 
series  of  inferences.  Before  our  ancestors  had 
become  men,  or  were  endowed  with  anything  like 


330  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

a  human  consciousness,  there  is  every  reason  for 
supposing  them  to  have  been  gregarious  in  their 
habits.  They  were  gregarious  primates  of  high 
sagacity.  But  gregarious  action,  among  animals 
endowed  with  any  sort  of  consciousness,  is  plainly 
impossible  unless  the  individual  animal  recognizes 
his  fellow's  consciousness  as  similar  to  or  kindred 
with  his  own.  Above  all,  the  first  beginnings  of 
speech  necessarily  involved  a  belief  in  the  eject. 
But  now,  says  Clifford,  "if  not  only  this  concep- 
tion of  the  particular  social  object,  but  all  those 
that  have  been  built  up  out  of  it,  have  been 
formed  at  the  same  time  with,  and  under  the  in- 
fluence of,  language,  it  seems  to  follow  that  the 
belief  in  the  existence  of  other  men's  minds  like 
our  own,  but  not  part  of  us,  must  be  inseparably 
associated  with  every  process  whereby  discrete  im- 
pressions are  built  together  into  an  object."  To 
vary  the  quaint  expression  of  Ferrier,  the  mini- 
mum scibile  per  se  is  not  exactly  ego  plus  object, 
but  it  is  ego  plus  eject.  Along  with  what  we  call 
the  objective  element  in  every  piece  of  our  knowl- 
edge there  is  not  only  a  reference  to  self,  but 
there  is  also  a  sub-conscious  reference  to  other 
selves  outside  of  us.  "  And  this  sub-conscious 
reference  to  supposed  ejects,"  continues  Clifford, 
"  is  what  constitutes  the  impression  of  externality 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff.  331 

in  the  object,  whereby  it  is  described  as  not-me. 
At  any  rate,  the  formation  of  the  social  object 
supplies  an  account  of  this  impression  of  outness, 
without  requiring  me  to  assume  any  ejects  or 
things  outside  my  consciousness  except  the  minds 
of  other  men.  Consequently  it  cannot  be  argued 
from  the  impression  of  outness  that  there  is  any- 
thing outside  of  my  consciousness  except  the 
minds  of  other  men." 

By  this  beautiful  method  of  presentation,  so 
much  fresh  light  is  thrown  upon  some  philosoph- 
ical truths  as  to  make  them  appear  self-evident. 
See  what  havoc  it  makes,  at  the  outset,  with  the 
crude  notion  of  the  materialists  —  a  notion  sup- 
ported by  loose  popular  language  and  loose  popu- 
lar thinking  —  that  changes  of  consciousness  are 
caused  by  physical  actions  on  or  within  the  organ- 
ism. Materialists  talk  about  "  ideas  "  as  "  origi- 
nating "  in  the  brain  ;  and  people  generally  have 
become  so  far  impressed  with  the  notion  that 
mental  states  are  caused  by  physical  actions  on 
the  nervous  system,  that  when  you  begin  to  ex- 
plain to  them  the  wonderfully  minute  correlations 
between  psychical  action  and  brain-action  which 
modern  psychology  is  disclosing,  they  immedi- 
ately take  fright  and  think  you  are  "  explaining 
away"  the  mind  altogether.  They  think  that 


332          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

in  order  to  refute  materialism  it  is  necessary  to 
deny  that  associations  of  ideas  occur  simulta- 
neously with  the  passage  of  waves  of  molecular 
motion  from  one  cell  to  another  in  the  gray  sur- 
face of  the  brain.  I  wonder  it  never  occurs  to 
them  that  they  might  more  summarily  effect  their 
purpose  by  denying,  once  for  all,  that  the  brain 
has  anything  whatever  to  do  with  mind,  or  has 
any  further  function  than  that  of  a  balance  wheel 
or  "  governor  "  for  regulating  the  motions  of  the 
viscera !  But  in  point  of  fact  their  alarm  is  al- 
together groundless.  Those  who  have  mastered 
the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy  in  its 
bearings  upon  the  facts  of  psychology  will  see, 
as  I  demonstrated  some  years  ago  in  "  Cosmic 
Philosophy,"  that  it  is  utterly  impossible  that  ac- 
tions in  the  nervous  system  should  ever,  under 
any  circumstances,  stand  in  the  relation  of  cause 
to  psychical  actions  going  on  in  the  mind.  A 
wave  of  molecular  motion  in  the  brain  cannot 
produce  a  feeling  or  a  state  of  consciousness.  It 
can  do  nothing  whatever  but  set  up  other  waves 
of  molecular  motion,  either  in  the  gray  matter  of 
ganglia  or  in  the  white  matter  of  nerve-fibres. 
Whatever  goes  in  any  way  into  the  organism  as 
physical  force  must  come  out  again  as  physical 
force,  and  every  phase  of  every  transformation 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff.  333 

that  it  may  undergo  in  the  mean  time  must  be 
rigorously  accounted  for  in  terms  of  physical  force, 
or  else  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
will  not  be  satisfied.  To  introduce  conscious- 
ness or  feeling  anywhere  in  the  series,  as  either 
caused  by  or  causing  actions  in  the  brain  or 
nerves,  is  "  not  to  state  what  is  untrue,  but  is  to 
talk  nonsense,"  as  Clifford  would  say.  These  con- 
siderations —  which  must  forever  shut  out  scio- 
lists like  Buchner  from  intruding  with  their  self- 
satisfied  explanations  into  the  great  primordial 
mystery  of  Nature,  the  relationship  of  body  and 
soul  —  would  seem  to  have  been  clearly  appre- 
ciated by  Clifford  ;  and  he  states  the  point  in  his 
psychological  language  with  elegant  succinctness. 
"  The  word  Cause,  TroAAa^ws  Aeyo/xci/ov  and  mislead- 
ing as  it  is,  having  no  legitimate  place  in  science 
or  philosophy  [Chauncey  Wright  would  have  said 
a  hearty  Amen  to  that  !J,  may  yet  be  of  some  use 
in  conversation  or  literature,  if  it  is  kept  to  de- 
note a  relation  between  objective  facts,  to  de- 
scribe certain  parts  of  the  phenomenal  order.  But 
only  confusion  can  arise,  if  it  is  used  to  express 
the  relation  between  certain  objective  facts  in  my 
consciousness  and  the  ejective  facts  which  are  in- 
ferred as  corresponding  in  some  way  to  them  and 
running  parallel  with  them.  .  .  .  The  distinction 


334  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

between  eject  and  object,  properly  grasped,  for. 
bids  us  to  regard  the  eject,  another  man's  mind, 
as  coming  into  the  world  of  objects  in  any  way, 
or  as  standing  in  the  relation  of  cause  or  effect  to 
any  changes  in  that  world.  I  need  hardly  add 
that  the  facts  do  very  strongly  lead  us  to  regard 
our  bodies  as  merely  complicated  examples  of 
practically  universal  physical  rules,  and  their  mo- 
tions as  determined  in  the  same  way  as  those  of 
the  sun  and  the  sea.  There  is  no  evidence  which 
amounts  to  a  prima  facie  case  against  the  dynami- 
cal uniformity  of  Nature ;  and  I  make  no  excep- 
tion in  favour  of  that  slykick  force  which  fills  ex- 
isting lunatic  asylums  and  makes  private  houses 
into  new  ones." 

The  doctrine  of  evolution,  as  applied  by  Mr. 
Spencer  to  the  study  of  psychical  phenomena, 
nowhere  undertakes  to  interpret  Mind  as  evolved 
from  Matter,  but  it  shows  a  wonderfully  minute 
and  instructive  parallelism  between  the  modes 
of  evolution  of  the  total  series  of  objective^fucts 
and  the  total  series  of  ejective  facts.  Pushing 
the  analysis,  both  of  physical  and  of  psychical 
phenomena,  to  its  farthest  possible  limits  with 
the  data  now  at  command,  Mr.  Spencer  has 
shown  how  all  the  phenomena  constituting  a  con- 
sciousness are  compounded  of  elementary  sub- 


A  Universe  of  Mind-Stuff.  335 

conscious  feelings  or  "psychical  shocks."  Physi- 
cal phenomena,  likewise,  in  an  ultimate  analysis, 
are  resolved  into  simple  pulsations  or  rhythmical 
movements  of  ether  -  atoms ;  and  the  question 
arises  as  to  the  relation  between  the  elementary 
physical  pulsation  and  the  elementary  psychical 
shock.  Reasoning  most  ingeniously  from  the 
essential  continuity  in  Nature  which  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  supposes,  and  recognizing  the  im- 
possibility of  deriving  the  psychical  element  from 
the  physical,  Clifford  reaches  the  conclusion  that 
k'  every  motion  of  matter  is  simultaneous  with 
some  ejective  fact  or  event  which  might  be  part 
of  a  consciousness."  This  simple  ejective  fact  or 
event  may  be  regarded  as  a  molecule,  so  to.  speak, 
of  mind-stuff;  and  we  reach  the  startling  conclu- 
sion that  "  the  universe  consists  entirely  of  mind- 
stuff.  Some  of  this  is  woven  into  the  complex 
form  of  human  minds  containing  imperfect  rep- 
resentations of  the  mind-stuff  outside  them,  and 
of  themselves  also,  as  a  mirror  reflects  its  own 
image  in  another  mirror  ad  infinitum.  Such  an 
imperfect  representation  is  called  a  material  uni- 
verse. It  is  a  picture  in  a  man's  mind  of  the 
real  universe  of  mind-stuff." 

Clifford  recognizes  that  this  doctrine  seems  to 
have  been  independently  arrived  at  by  many  per- 


336  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

sons,  and  he  instances  the  statements  of  Wundt 
in  his  "  Physiologische  Psychologic."  The  the- 
ory harmonizes  well  with  that  which  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  elucidate  in  the  chapter  on  Matter 
and  Spirit  in  my  "  Cosmic  Philosophy,"  though 
the  result  was  reached  by  different  processes  of 
inference  in  the  two  cases.  With  Clifford's 
further  conclusion,  that  the  complex  web  of  hu- 
man consciousness  cannot  survive  the  disintegra- 
tion of  the  organic  structure  with  which  we  in- 
variably find  it  associated,  I  do  not  agree.  It  is 
a  conclusion  not  involved  in  the  premises,  and  is 
one  which  no  scientific  philosopher,  as  such,  has 
a  right  to  draw.  It  necessitates  as  complete  a 
transgression  of  the  bounds  of  experience  as  any 
theologian  is  ever  called  upon  to  make.  Least  of 
all  would  one  expect  to  see  Clifford  drawing  such 
a  conclusion  and  announcing  it  with  a  tinge  of 
dogmatic  emphasis  withal,  after  reading  his  admi- 
rable remarks  on  Lobatchevski,  where  he  shows 
how  strictly  the  modern  thinker  must  limit  his 
generalizations  to  the  region  covered  by  experi- 
ence. Were  it  not  for  a  trifle  too  much  of  what 
Mr.  Spencer  would  call  the  "  anti  -  theological 
bias,"  Clifford's  way  of  reasoning  about  the  uni- 
verse would  have  left  little  to  be  desired. 
November,  1879. 


,  XIV. 

IN  MEMORIAM  :  CHARLES  DARWIN. 

TODAY,  while  all  that  was  mortal  of  Charles 
Darwin  is  borne  to  its  last  resting-place  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  by  the  side  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton, 
it  seems  a  fitting  occasion  to  utter  a  few  words 
of  tribute  to  the  memory  of  the  beautiful  and 
glorious  life  that  has  just  passed  away  from  us. 
Though  Mr.  Darwin  had  more  than  completed 
his  threescore  and  ten  years,  and  though  his  life 
had  been  rich  in  achievement  and  crowned  with 
success  such  as  is  but  seldom  vouchsafed  to  man, 
yet  the  news  of  his  death  has  none  the  less  im- 
pressed us  with  a  sense  of  sudden  and  premature 
bereavement.  For  on  the  one  hand  the  time 
would  never  have  come  when  those  of  us  who  had 
learned  the  inestimable  worth  of  such  a  teacher 
and  friend  could  have  felt  ready  to  part  with 
him  ;  and  on  the  other  hand  Mr.  Darwin  was  one 
whom  the  gods,  for  love  of  him,  had  endowed 
with  perpetual  youth,  so  that  his  death  could 
never  seem  otherwise  than  premature.  As  Mr. 

22 


338          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Galton  has  well  said,  the  period  of  physical  yonth 
—  say  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  twenty-second 
year  —  is,  with  most  men,  the  only  available 
period  for  acquiring  the  intellectual  habits  and 
amassing  the  stores  of  knowledge  that  are  to  form 
their  equipment  for  the  work  of  a  life-time ;  but 
in  the  case  of  men  of  the  highest  order  this  period 
is  simply  a  period  of  seven  years,  neither  more 
nor  less  valuable  than  any  other  seven  years. 
There  is,  now  and  then,  a  mind  —  perhaps  one 
in  four  or  five  millions  —  which  in  early  youth 
thinks  the  thoughts  of  mature  manhood,  and 
which  in  old  age  retains  the  flexibility,  the  re- 
ceptiveness,  the  keen  appetite  for  new  impres- 
sions, that  are  characteristic  of  the  fresh  season  of 
youth.  Such  a  mind  as  this  was  Mr.  Darwin's. 
To  the  last  he  was  eager  for  new  facts  and  sug- 
gestions, to  the  last  he  held  his  judgments  in 
readiness  for  revision ;  and  to  this  unfailing  fresh- 
ness of  spirit  was  joined  a  sagacity  which,  natu- 
rally great,  had  been  refined  and  strengthened  by 
half  a  century  most  fruitful  in  experiences,  till 
it  had  come  to  be  almost  superhuman.  When 
we  remember  how  Alexander  von  Humboldt 
began  at  the  age  of  seventy-five  to  write  his 
"Kosmos,"  and  how  he  lived  to  turn  off  in  his 
ninetieth  year  the  fifth  bulky  volume  of  that  pro- 


In  Memoriam  :  Charles  Darwin.         339 

digiously  learned  book,  —  when  we  remember 
this,  and  consider  the  great  scientific  value  of  the 
monographs  which  Mr.  Darwin  has  lately  been 
publishing  almost  every  year,  we  must  feel  that 
it  is  in  a  measure  right  to  speak  of  his  death  as 
premature. 

After  all,  however,  no  one  can  fail  to  recognize 
in  the  career  of  Mr.  Darwin  the  interest  that  be- 
longs to  a  complete  and  well-rounded  tale.  When 
the  extent  of  his  work  is  properly  estimated,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  among  all  the  great 
leaders  of  human  thought  that  have  ever  lived 
there  are  not  half  a  dozen  who  have  achieved  so 
much  as  he.  In  an  age  that  has  been  richer  than 
any  preceding  age  in  great  scientific  names,  his 
name  is  indisputably  the  foremost.  He  has  al- 
ready found  his  place  in  the  history  of  science 
by  the  side  of  Aristotle,  Descartes,  and  Newton. 
And  among  thinkers  of  the  first  order  of  original- 
ity, he  has  been  peculiarly  fortunate  in  having 
lived  to  see  all  the  fresh  and  powerful  minds  of  a 
new  generation  adopting  his  fundamental  con- 
ceptions, and  pursuing  their  inquiries  along  the 
path  which  he  was  the  first  to  break. 

When  Mr.  Darwin  was  born,  in  1809,  the  name 
which  he  inherited  was  already  a  famous  name. 
Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin,  the  friend  of  Priestley  and 


340  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Watt,  and  author  of  'Jie  "  Botanic  Garden,"  was 
deservedly  ranked  among  the  most  ingenious  and 
original  thinkers  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England.  His  brother,  Robert  Waring  Darwin, 
was  the  author  of  a  vork  on  botany  which  for 
many  years  enjoyed  high  repute.  Of  the  sons  of 
Erasmus,  one,  Sir  Francis  Darwin,  was  noted  as 
a  keen  observer  of  animals ;  another,  Charles, 
who  died  at  the  age  of  twenty-one  from  a  dissec- 
tion wound,  had  already  written  a  medical  essay 
of  such  importance  as  to  give  his  name  a  place  in 
biographical  dictionaries  ;  a  third,  Robert  War- 
ing, who  achieved  great  distinction  as  a  physi- 
cian, married  a  daughter  of  the  celebrated  Josiah 
Wedgwood,  and  became  the  father  of  the  im- 
mortal discoverer  who  has  just  been  taken  away 
from  us.  While  citing  these  remarkable  in- 
stances of  inherited  ability,  it  may  be  of  interest 
to  mention  also  that  among  the  cousins  of  Mr. 
Darwin  who  have  become  more  or  less  distin- 
guished in  our  own  time  are  Mr.  Hensleigh 
Wedgwood,  the  philologist,  the  late  Sir  Henry 
Holland,  and  Mr.  Francis  Galton,  whose  excel- 
lent treatise  on  "  Hereditary  Genius  "  is  known  to 
every  one.  Nor  can  it  be  irrelevant  to  add  that 
one  of  Mr.  Darwin's  sons  has  already,  through 
his  study  of  the  tides,  achieved  some  remarkable 


In  Memoriam  :   Charles  Darwin.         341 

results,  which  seem  likely   to  give  him   a  high 
place  among  the  astronomers  of  the  present  day. 

There  is  one  thing  which  a  man  of  original 
scientific  or  philosophical  genius  in  a  rightly  or- 
dered world  should  never  be  called  upon  to  do. 
He  should  never  be  called  upon  to  "  earn  a  liv- 
ing ; "  for  that  is  a  wretched  waste  of  energy,  in 
which  the  highest  intellectual  power  is  sure  to 
suffer  serious  detriment,  and  runs  the  risk  of  be- 
ing frittered  away  into  hopeless  ruin.  Like  his 
great  predecessor  and  ally,  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Mr. 
Darwin  was  so  favoured  by  fortune  as  to  be  free 
from  this  odious  necessity.  He  was  able  to  devote 
his  whole  life  with  a  single  mind  to  the  pursuit  of 
scientific  truth,  and  to  ministering  in  the  most 
exalted  way  to  the  welfare  of  his  fellow-creatures. 
After  taking  his  Master's  degree  at  Cambridge  in 
1831,  at  the  age  of  twenty-two,  an  opportunity 
was  offered  Mr.  Darwin  for  studying  natural  his- 
tory on  a  grand  scale.  The  Beagle,  a  ten-gun 
brig  under  the  command  of  Captain  Fitzroy,  was 
then  about  to  start  on  a  long  voyage,  "  to  com- 
plete the  survey  of  Patagonia  and  Tierra  del 
Fuego,  ...  to  survey  the  shores  of  Chili,  Peru, 
and  of  some  islands  in  the  Pacific,  and  to  carry  a 
chain  of  chronometrical  measurements  round  the 
world."  As  Captain  Fitzroy  had  expressed  a 


342  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

wish  to  have  a  naturalist  accompany  the  expedi- 
tion, Mr.  Darwin  volunteered  his  services,  which 
the  Lords  of  the  Admiralty  readily  accepted,  — 
a  fact  which  in  itself  is  sufficient  evidence  of  the 
reputation  for  scientific  attainments  which  Mr. 
Darwin  had  already  gained  at  that  youthful  age. 
This  memorable  voyage,  which  lasted  five  years, 
was  very  fruitful  in  results.  The  general  his- 
tory of  the  voyage,  with  an  account  of  such  obser- 
vations in  natural  history  as  seemed  likely  to  in- 
terest the  ordinary  reader,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
"  Journal  of  Researches  "  published  by  Mr.  Dar- 
win some  three  years  after  his  return  to  England. 
This  book  immediately  acquired  a  great  popular- 
ity, which  it  has  retained  to  this  day,  having 
gone  through  at  least  thirteen  editions  ;  and  it  is 
certainly  one  of  the  most  fascinating  books  of 
travel  that  was  ever  written.  "  The  author," 
said  the  "  Quarterly  Review,"  in  December,  1839, 
"  is  a  first-rate  landscape  painter  with  the  pen, 
and  the  dreariest  solitudes  are  made  to  teem  with 
interest."  An  abridgment  of  this  charming  jour- 
nal, lately  published  with  illustrations,  under  the 
title  "  What  Mr.  Darwin  saw  in  his  Voyage  round 
the  World,"  has  become  a  favourite  book  for  boys 
and  girls. 

The  scientific  results  of  Mr.  Darwin's  voyage 


In  Memoriam  :  Charles  Darwin.         343 

in  the  Beagle  were  so  voluminous  that  it  required 
several  years  and  the  assistance  of  many  -able 
hands  to  record  them  all.  Owen,  Hooker,  Water- 
house,  Berkeley,  Bell,  and  other  eminent  nat- 
uralists took  part  in  the  publication  of  these  re- 
sults, which  formed  a  very  important  contribution 
to  the  zoology  and  botany,  and  to  the  palaeontol- 
ogy, of  the  countries  visited  in  the  course  of  the 
voyage.  To  this  great  series  of  volumes,  which  ap- 
peared between  1840  and  1846,  Mr.  Darwin  con- 
tributed three  from  his  own  hand,  —  the  work  on 
"  Volcanic  Islands,"  the  "  Geological  Observations 
on  South  America,"  and  the  famous  essay  on 
"  Coral  Reefs."  In  this  latter  work  Mr.  Darwin 
proved  that  through  gradual  submergence  fring- 
ing-reefs  are  developed  into  barrier-reefs,  and 
these  again  into  atolls  or  lagoon-islands ;  and  thus 
he  not  only  for  the  first  time  rendered  comprehen- 
sible the  work  of  coral-building,  but  threw  a  new 
and  wonderful  light  upon  the  movements  of  ele- 
vation and  of  subsidence  in  all  parts  of  the  globe. 
By  thus  bringing  the  work  of  the  corals  into  its 
direct  relationship  with  volcanic  phenomena,  Mr. 
Darwin  succeeded  in  presenting  "a  grand  and 
harmonious  picture  of  the  movements  which  the 
crust  of  the  earth  has  undergone  within  a  late 
period  ; "  and  the  result  was  undoubtedly  one  of 


344  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

the  most  brilliant  contributions  to  geology  that 
has  been  made  since  the  first  publication  of  the 
great  work  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell.  In  1851-53  Mr. 
Darwin  published  a  "  Monograph  of  the  Cirri- 
pedia,"  in  two  volumes  octavo,  and  accompanied 
this,  about  the  same  time,  with  monographs  of  the 
various  fossil  genera  of  cirri peds  (or  barnacle  fam- 
ily) in  Great  Britain.  In  recognition  of  his  solid 
and  brilliant  achievements,  Mr.  Darwin  in  1853 
received  the  royal  medal  from  the  Royal  Society, 
and  in  1859  the  Wollaston  medal  from  the  Geo- 
logical Society.  By  this  time  his  name  had  come 
to  be  known  in  all  parts  of  the  civilized  world, 
and  he  was  already  ranked  among  the  foremost 
living  naturalists,  so  that  when,  in  the  year  1859, 
the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  was  published,  it  at  once 
attracted  universal  attention  by  reason  of  the 
eminence  of  its  author.  I  well  remember  how, 
in  the  first  few  weeks  after  the  book  was  pub- 
lished, every  one  at  all  instructed  in  the  biologi- 
cal sciences  was  eager  to  ascertain  the  views  of  so 
distinguished  a  naturalist  with  regard  to  a  ques- 
tion which  for  several  years  had  agitated  the 
scientific  world. 

Like  the  great  works  which  had  preceded  it, 
the  "Origin  of  Species"  must  be  regarded  as  one 
of  the  results  of  the  ever  memorable  voyage  of 


In  Memoriam  :   Charles  Darwin.         345 

the  Beagle.  In  the  course  of  this  voyage  Mr.  Dar- 
win visited  the  Galapagos  Islands,  and  was  struck 
by  the  peculiar  relations  which  the  floras  and  fau- 
nas of  this  archipelago  sustained  to  one  another, 
and  to  the  flora  and  fauna  of  the  nearest  mainland 
of  Ecuador,  distant  some  five  hundred  miles. 
These  islands  are  purely  volcanic  in  formation, 
and  have  never  at  any  time  been  joined  to  the 
South  American  continent.  They  possess  no  ba- 
trachians  and  no  mammals,  save  a  mouse,  which 
was  no  doubt  introduced  by  some  ship.  The  only 
insects  are  coleoptera,  which  possess  peculiar  fa- 
cilities for  transportation  across  salt  water  upon 
floating  logs  or  branches  ;  and  along  with  these 
are  two  or  three  species  of  land  shells.  There  are 
also  two  snakes,  one  land  tortoise,  and  four  kinds 
of  lizard ;  and  in  striking  contrast  with  all  this 
general  extreme  paucity  of  animal  forms,  there 
are  at  least  fifty-five  species  of  birds.  Now  these 
insects,  mollusks,  reptiles,  and  birds  are  like  the 
insects,  mollusks,  reptiles,  and  birds  of  the  west- 
ern coast  of  South  America,  and  not  like  the  cor- 
responding animals  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 
But  this  is  not  all ;  for  the  Galapagos  animals, 
while  very  like  the  animals  of  Ecuador,  Peru,  and 
Chili,  are  not  quite  like  them.  While  the  fami- 
lies are  identical,  the  differences  are  always  at 


346  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

least  specific,  sometimes  generic,  in  value.  Pre- 
cisely the  same  sort  of  relationship  is  sustained  by 
the  Galapagos  flora  toward  the  flora  of  the  main- 
land. And,  to  crown  all,  the  differences  between 
forms  that  are  generic  when  the  archipelago  as  a 
whole  is  compared  with  the  continent  sink  into 
specific  differences  when  the  several  islands  of  the 
archipelago  are  compared  with  one  another.  Such 
a  group  of  facts  as  these  leads  irresistibly  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  specific  forms  of  plants  and 
animals  have  been  originated,  not  by  "  special 
creations,"  but  by  "  descent  with  modifications." 
If  species  have  been  separately  created,  there  is 
of  course  no  reason  why  the  population  of  such  an 
archipelago  should  be  strictly  limited  to  such  or- 
ganisms as  can  fly  or  get  floated  across  the  water ; 
nor  is  there  any  reason  why  these  organisms  should 
resemble  those  of  the  nearest  mainland  rather 
than  those  of  any  other  tropical  mainland,  such  as 
Africa  or  India.  One  might  indeed  object  that 
organisms  have  been  created  in  such  wise  as  most 
completely  to  harmonize  with  the  physical  condi- 
tions by  which  they  are  surrounded,  and  that  it  is 
to  be  presumed  that  the  physical  conditions  of  the 
Galapagos  Islands  are  more  like  those  of  Ecuador 
and  Peru  than  ther  are  like  those  of  any  other 
countries  ;  so  that  in  this  way  the  general  simi- 


In  Memoriam:  Charles  Darwin.  347 
larity  between  the  floras  and  faunas  may  be  ac- 
counted for.  But  such  an  explanation  is  very 
weak,  for  it  rests  upon  an  assumption  which  has 
been  proved  to  be  untrue.  It  is  not  always  true 
that  the  organisms  in  any  given  part  of  the  world 
are  such  as  harmonize  best  with  the  physical  con- 
ditions by  which  they  are  surrounded.  It  is  approx- 
imately true  only  where  the  competition  among 
organisms  is  practically  unlimited  ;  in  protected 
areas  it  is  not  at  all  true.  In  Australia  and  New 
Zealand,,  for  example,  the  plants  and  animals 
which  have  been  introduced  by  Europeans  are 
exterminating  and  supplanting  the  native  plants 
and  animals  quite  as  rapidly  as  the  Englishman  is 
supplanting  the  native  human  population  of  these 
countries.  And  to  state  this  fact  is  only  to  say, 
in  other  words,  that  the  plants  and  animals  of 
Europe  are  better  adapted  to  the  physical  condi- 
tions which  prevail. in  Australia  and  New  Zealand 
than  the  plants  and  animals  which  are  indigenous 
there.  A  comprehensive  survey  of  the  distribu- 
tion of  life  all  over  the  globe  confirms  this  conclu- 
sion, and  shows  that  by  no  assumption  of  a  special 
act  of  creation  can  the  peculiar  features  of  the 
Galapagos  flora  and  fauna  be  explained.  The 
only  way  in  which  to  account  for  these  features  is 
to  suppose  that  the  archipelago  has  been  peopled 


348  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

by  migrations  from  the  nearest  mainland.  This 
explains  why  the  creatures  there  are  most  like  the 
creatures  of  Ecuador  and  Peru,  and  it  also  ex- 
plains why  the  only  indigenous  animals  to  be 
found  there  are  such  as  could  have  flown  or  been 
blown  thither,  or  such  as  could  have  been  ferried 
thither  on  floating  vegetation. 

But  if  all  this  be  true  —  and  to-day  no  compe- 
tent naturalist  doubts  it  —  a  conclusion  of  vast 
importance  immediately  follows.  If  the  Galapa- 
gos plants  and  animals  are  descended  from  ances- 
tors that  migrated  thither  from  the  continent,  they 
have  been  modified  during  ages  of  residence  in  the 
islands,  until  they  have  come  to  differ  specifically, 
and  in  many  cases  genetically,  from  their  collat- 
eral relations  on  the  mainland.  And  this  amounts 
to  saying  that  species  are  not  fixed,  but  mutable, 
—  that  every  distinct  form  of  plant  and  animal 
was  not  originally  created  with  its  present  attri- 
butes, but  that  some  forms  have  arisen  from  the 
modification  of  ancestral  forms. 

In  this  way,  from  the  study  of  the  inhabitants 
of  a  single  well-defined  area,  Mr.  Darwin  was  led 
into  a  series  of  most  grand  and  startling  consid- 
erations relating  to  the  past  history  of  life  upon 
our  globe.  The  conclusions  thus  succinctly  stated 
were  amply  confirmed  by  a  survey  of  the  distri- 


In  Memoriam:  Charles  Darwin.  340 
bution  of  organisms  all  over  the  earth,  and  thus 
was  inaugurated  the  study  of  zoological  and  bo- 
tanical geography,  —  a  study  which  in  half  a  cen- 
tury has  reached  such  magnificent  proportions  in 
the  great  works  of  Hooker  and  Wallace,  and  which 
owes  its  wonderful  progress  mainly  to  the  saga- 
cious impulse  communicated  at  the  outset  by  Mr. 
Darwin.  It  has  now  become  well  established  that 
in  very  few  cases,  if  any,  have  animals  and 
plants  originated  exactly  in  the  places  where  we 
now  find  them,  but  that  they  are  almost  always 
the  offspring  of  immigrants ;  and  the  study  of 
the  ancient  migrations  of  the  progenitors  of  liv- 
ing plants  and  animals  has  begun  to  throw  a 
flood  of  light  upon  the  history  of  the  changes 
that  have  taken  place  in  the  physical  geography 
of  the  earth. 

The  conception  of  the  origin  of  species  through 
"  descent  with  modifications  "  having  been  thus 
forcibly  suggested  to  Mr.  Darwin  by  the  facts  of 
geographical  distribution,  it  was  still  further 
strengthened  by  a  study  of  the  geological  succes- 
sion of  extinct  organisms  and  their  relations  to 
living  organisms  in  the  same  areas.  Such  broad 
facts  as  the  successive  appearance  of  various  sloth- 
like  and  ai-madillo-like  animals  in  South  America, 
or  of  various  marsupials  and  monotrQmes  in  Aus- 


350  Excursions  of  ati  Evolutionist. 

tralia,  forcibly  suggest  the  descent  of  the  later 
forms  from  the  earlier  ones  that  lived  in  the  same 
countries.  Of  like  import  is  the  general  fact  that 
in  the  course  of  geological  succession  any  given 
organism  is  sure  to  be  intermediate  in  character 
between  those  that  have  preceded  and  those  that 
have  followed  it.  But  still  more  powerfully  sug- 
gestive even  than  this  is  the  fact  that,  in  propor- 
tion as  we  go  back  in  geologic  time,  we  find  the 
characteristics  of  plants  and  animals  to  be  less 
and  less  distinctly  specialized :  so  that,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  Eocene  period,  instead  of  horses 
and  tapirs  such  as  now  exist  we  find  an  animal 
something  like  a  tapir  and  something  like  a  horse ; 
and  instead  of  leopards  and  wolves  and  bears  we 
find  carnivorous  animals,  not  specialized  as  of  fe- 
line or  canine  or  ursine  family,  but  with  some 
points  of  resemblance  to  all  three,  and  with  some 
points  like  opossums  and  wombats  into  the  bar- 
gain. In  conformity  with  this  general  principle, 
the  arrangement  of  organisms  according  to  their 
succession  in  geologic  time  would  be  like  the 
branches  and  branchlets  of  a  tree,  which  is  the 
typical  form  of  arrangement  where  the  link  that 
connects  the  facts  arranged  is  the  link  of  parent- 
age. 

But  just  here  the  facts  of  geological  succession 


In  Memoriam  :   Charles  Darwin.         351 

are  reinforced,  with  truly  overwhelming  conclu- 
siveness,  by  the  great  facts  of  classification  in  the 
animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms.  This  branching 
tree-like  arrangement,  which  alone  correctly  rep- 
resents the  relationships  of  organisms  in  their  ge- 
ological succession,  is  at  the  same  time  the  only 
possible  arrangement  by  which  the  likenesses  and 
affinities  among  existing  organisms  can  be  repre- 
sented with  anything  like  an  approach  to  correct- 
ness. The  facts  of  palaeontology  exactly  dovetail 
in  with  those  of  taxonomy,  and  serve  to  elucidate 
and  emphasize  them.  Many  eminent  naturalists 
before  Cuvier  attempted  to  classify  all  animals  in 
a  linear  series,  but  Cuvier  proved  once  for  all  that 
no  such  arrangement  is  possible.  The  only  fea- 
sible arrangement  is  that  of  groups  within  groups, 
diverging  like  the  branches  and  twigs  of  what  we 
aptly  term  a  "  family-tree ; "  and  this  fact  not 
only  strongly  suggests  the  theory  of  "descent 
with  modifications,"  but  is  indeed  utterly  incom- 
patible with  any  other  theory. 

Further  powerful  evidence  in  favour  of  the  same 
view  is  furnished  by  countless  familiar  facts  of 
morphology  and  embryology.  On  the  theory  of 
"  descent  with  modifications,"  it  is  intelligible  that 
all  the  classes  and  orders  of  the  vertebrate  sub- 
kingdom,  for  example,  should  be  constructed  on 


352  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

exactly  the  same  fundamental  plan,  —  that  the 
arms  of  men,  the  fore-legs  of  quadrupeds,  the 
paddles  of  cetacea,  the  wings  of  birds,  and  the  pec- 
toral fins  of  fishes  should  be  structurally  identical 
with  one  another.  It  is  intelligible  that  a  horse's 
hoof  should  be,  as  it  is,  made  up  of  toes  that 
have  grown  together.  It  is  intelligible  that  every 
mammalian  embryo  should  begin,  as  it  does,  to 
develop  as  if  it  were  going  to  become  a  fish,  cir- 
culating its  blood  through  gills  and  a  two-cham- 
bered heart,  and  then,  changing  its  course,  should 
behave  as  if  it  were  going  to  become  a  reptile  or 
bird,  and  only  after  long  delay  should  assume  the 
distinctive  characteristics  of  mammality.  It  is  in- 
telligible that  many  snakes  should  possess  beneath 
their  skin  the  rudiments  of  limbs;  that  sundry 
insects,  which  never  fly,  should  have  wings  firmly 
fastened  down  to  their  sides ;  and  that  the  em- 
bryos of  many  birds,  while  developing  in  the  egg, 
should  grow  temporary  teeth  within  their  little 
beaks.  But  it  is  only  on  the  theory  of  "  descent 
with  modifications  "  that  such  facts,  which  are  in 
no  wise  exceptional,  but  common  throughout  the 
entire  animal  kingdom,  have  any  meaning  what- 
ever. 

Many  of  these  facts  had  been  noticed  by  em- 
inent naturalists  before  Mr.  Darwin,  and  their  in. 


In  Memoriam :  Charles  Darwin.  353 
compatibility  with  any  theory  of  special  creations 
had  also  been  observed ;  but  it  was  Mr.  Darwin 
who  first  marshalled  them  into  one  mighty  argu- 
ment, of  which  the  cumulative  result  was  that  the 
phenomena  of  the  organic  world  are  unintelligible 
from  beginning  to  end  save  on  the  theory  of  "  de- 
scent with  modifications."  Had  Mr.  Darwin  done 
nothing  but  this,  it  would  have  given  him  a  pe- 
culiar right  to  associate  his  name  with  the  devel- 
opment theory,  it  would  have  established  that 
theory  on  a  basis  of  "  convincing  probability," 
and  it  would  have  entitled  him  to  a  high  place  in 
the  history  of  scientific  thought  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  But  Mr.  Darwin  did  not  stop  here. 
Convinced  by  such  considerations  as  those  just 
presented  that  the  specific  characters  of  plants 
and  animals  are  not  constant,  but  variable,  he 
sought  for  some  grand  all-pervading  cause  of  vari- 
ation in  organisms,  and  his  search  was  crowned 
with  success.  This  was  the  achievement  which 
in  his  hands  raised  the  development  theory  from 
the  rank  of  a  brilliant  philosophical  speculation 
into  the  rank  of  an  irrefragable  scientific  dis- 
covery. This  was  the  achievement  which  gave 
to  mankind  a  new  implement  of  research  and  a 
new  insight  into  the  workings  of  Nature,  and  it 
was  this  which  justifies  us  in  placing  Mr.  Dar- 

23 


354  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

win's   name   beside   those   of  Newton  and   Des- 
cartes. 

The  method  by  which  Mr.  Darwin  succeeded 
in  discovering  the  cause  of  variation  in  organisms 
was  the  thoroughly  scientific  method  of  advancing 
tentatively  from  the  known  to  the  unknown. 
Are  there  any  instances  in  which  the  forms  of 
plants  and  animals  have  actually  been  seen  to 
vary,  and,  if  there  are,  what  seems  to  have  been 
the  principal  cause  of  variation  in  these  instances? 
The  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  instances  are 
very  numerous  indeed  in  which  variations  —  and 
very  marked  ones,  too —  have  been  wrought  in  the 
characteristics  of  plants  and  animals  through  the 
agency  of  man.  The  phenomena  of  variation 
presented  by  animals  and  plants  under  domesti- 
cation are  so  numerous  and  so  complex  that  it 
would  require  many  volumes  to  describe  them. 
Dogs,  horses,  pigs,  cattle,  sheep,  rabbits,  pigeons, 
poultry,  silk-moths,  cereal  and  culinary  plants, 
fruits  and  flowers  innumerable,  have  been  reared 
and  bred  by  man  for  many  long  ages,  —  some  of 
them  from  time  immemorial.  These  domesti- 
cated organisms  man  has  caused  to  vary,  in  one 
direction  or  another,  to  suit  his  natural  or  arti- 
ficial needs,  or  even  the  mere  whim  of  his  fancy. 
The  variations,  moreover,  which  have  thus  been 


In  Memoriam:  Charles  Darwin.         855 

produced  have  been  neither  slight  nor  unim- 
portant, and  have  been  by  no  means  confined  to 
superficial  characteristics.  Compare  the  thor- 
ough-bred race-horse  with  the  gigantic  London 
dray-horse  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Shetland 
pony  on  the  other ;  or,  among  pigeons,  contrast 
the  pouter  with  the  fan-tail,  the  barb,  the  short- 
faced  tumbler,  or  the  jacobin,  all  of  which  are 
historically  known  to  have  descended  from  one 
and  the  same  ancestral  form.  The  differences  ex- 
tend throughout  the  whole  bony  framework  as 
well  as  throughout  the  muscular  and  nervous 
systems,  and  exceed  in  amount  the  differences  by 
which  naturalists  often  adjudge  species  to  be  dis- 
tinct. Through  what  agency  has  man  produced 
such  results  as  these  ?  He  has  produced  them 
simply  by  taking  advantage  of  a  slight  tendency 
to  variation  which  exists  perpetually  in  all  plants 
and  animals,  and  which  exhibits  itself  in  the  sim- 
ple fact  that  nowhere  do  we  ever  find  any  two  indi- 
viduals exactly  alike.  Taking  advantage  of  these 
individual  variations,  the  breeder  simply  selects 
the  individuals  which  best  suit  his  purpose,  and 
breeds  them  apart  by  themselves.  The  qualities 
for  which  they  are  selected  are  propagated  and 
enhanced  through  inheritance  and  renewed  selec- 
tion in  each  succeeding  generation,  until  by  the 


356          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

slow  accumulation  of  small  differences  a  new  race 
is  formed.  And  thus  we  have  peaches  and  al- 
monds from  a  common  source,  grapes  to  eat  and 
grapes  to  make  wine  of,  pointer-dogs  and  mastiffs, 
and  so  on  throughout  the  list  of  cultivated  plants 
and  domesticated  animals. 

These  facts  about  variation  under  domestica- 
tion are  for  the  most  part  well  known,  and  the 
alleged  cause  of  variation,  in  selection  by  man,  is 
not  an  occult  cause,  but  is  a  phenomenon  per- 
fectly familiar  to  every  one.  Starting  from  this 
point,  Mr.  Darwin  made  a  very  elaborate  study 
of  all  that  farmers,  horticulturists,  and  breeders 
could  impart  concerning  "  artificial  selection  ; " 
and  more  especially  with  regard  to  pigeons  his 
own  observations  were  so  extensive  and  minute 
that,  when  the  "Origin  of  Species"  was  published, 
I  recollect  reading  one  silly  review,  in  which  we 
were  gravely  inform ed  that  here  was  a  new  theory 
of  development,  —  not  by  a  naturalist,  but  by  a 
mere  pigeon-fancier,  and  probably  worthy  of  very 
little  consideration  ! 

Such  being  the  wonders  which  man  has  wrought 
within  a  comparatively  short  time  through  "  arti- 
ficial selection  "  in  the  breeding  of  animals  and 
plants,  the  question  next  arises  whether  any  selec- 
tive process  like  this  has  been  going  on  through 


In  Memoriam  :   Charles  Darwin.        357 

countless  ages  without  the  intervention  of  man. 
Can  it  be  that  there  is  a  "  natural  selection  "  of 
individual  variations,  whereby  new  species  are 
produced  in  just  the  same  way  that  breeders  pro- 
duce new  races  of  pigeons  ?  There  is  such  a 
"  natural  selection "  forever  going  on  as  one  of 
the  inseparable  concomitants  of  organic  life  ;  and 
it  was  just  in  the  detection  of  this  great  truth 
that  the  very  kernel  of  Mr.  Darwin's  stupendous 
discovery  consisted.  It  was  here  that  the  poetic 
or  creative  act  of  genius  came  into  play,  just  as 
it  did  in  Newton's  discovery,  when  the  fall  of  the 
moon  was  likened  to  the  fall  of  the  apple,  and 
the  tangential  force  of  the  moon  to  the  tangential 
force  of  a  stone  whirled  at  the  end  of  a  string. 
The  case  is  simple  enough,  when  creative  genius 
has  once  explained  it.  So  great  is  the  destruction 
of  organic  life  that  out  of  hundreds  of  seeds,  or 
spawn,  or  ova,  but  one  or  two  ever  live  to  come  to 
maturity  and  reproduce  themselves  in  offspring. 
Such  is  the  result  of  the  universal  and  unrelent- 
ing competition  between  organisms  for  the  means 
of  subsistence.  Any  creature  that  lives  to  repro- 
duce its  kind  is  selected  from  out  of  a  thousand 
that  perish  prematurely,  and  its  selection  is  evi- 
dence of  its  better  adaptation  to  the  conditions 
amid  which  it  is  placed.  And  so  stern  and  so 


858          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

ubiquitous  is  the  competition  that  there  is  no  in- 
dividual variation,  however  slight  or  apparently 
trivial,  that  is  not  liable  to  be  seized  upon  and 
enhanced  if  it  tend  in  any  way  to  promote  the 
survival  of  the  species.  Thus  it  is  natural  selec- 
tion that  at  every  moment  preserves  the  stability 
of  a  species,  and  keeps  it  in  harmony  with  its  en- 
vironment, by  cutting  off  all  individual  variations 
that  oscillate  too  far  on  either  side  of  a  prescribed 
mean.  The  stability  of  a  species  depends,  there- 
fore, upon  the  stability  of  the  environment ;  and 
the  only  condition  under  which  a  species  could 
remain  unchanged  would  be,  that  it  should  re- 
main forever  exposed  to  the  action  of  changeless 
groups  of  circumstances.  But  this  has  never  been 
the  case  with  any  species,  and  never  will  be.  The 
habitable  surface  of  the  earth  has  been  perpet- 
ually changing  for  a  hundred  million  years,  and 
the  relations  between  the  countless  groups  of  or- 
ganisms that  have  covered  its  surface  have  been 
perpetually  changing  in  endless  degrees  of  com- 
plexity ;  and  in  such  a  world,  under  the  working 
of  natural  selection,  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as 
"  fixity  of  species." 

Having  arrived  at  these  grand  conclusions,  it 
became  comparatively  easy  for  Mr.  Darwin  to  go 
on  and  trace  the  workings  of  natural  selection  in 


In  Memoriam;  Charles  Darwin.        859 

many  special  instances.  In  these  inquiries,,  upon 
which  he  brought  to  bear  a  knowledge  of  the  de- 
tails of  organic  life  more  vast  and  multifarious 
than  has  ever  been  possessed  by  any  other  man, 
he  occupied  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  before 
it  seemed  to  him  that  the  time  had  come  for  mak- 
ing his  discovery  known  to  the  world.  In  1844, 
he  wrote  out  a  brief  sketch  of  the  conclusions 
which,  as  he  modestly  says,  "  then  seemed  to  me 
probable ; "  and  this  sketch  he  showed  to  his 
friend  Hooker,  perhaps  also  to  Lyell.  But  fifteen 
years  more,  rich  in  observation  and  reflection, 
passed  away,  and  still  the  world  had  heard  noth- 
ing about  the  origin  of  species  by  means  of  nat- 
ural selection.  How  much  longer  this  silence 
might  have  lasted,  had  not  an  unforeseen  circum- 
stance come  in  to  break  it,  one  cannot  say.  But 
no  doubt  it  would  have  lasted  some  time  longer, 
for  Mr.  Darwin  did  not  wish  to  publish  his  con- 
clusions until  he  had  given  due  attention  to  every 
fact  and  every  argument  which  might  in  any  way 
bear  upon  them  ;  and  it  is  quite  evident  that 
when  he  wrote  the  "Origin  of  Species"  he  did  not 
realize  either  the  wonderful  maturity  which  his 
argument  had  attained,  or  the  overwhelming  co- 
gency with  which  he  was  then  actually  presenting 
it  to  the  world.  It  was  very  characteristic  of  Mr. 


360          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Darwin  —  into  the  fibre  of  whose  mind  there  en- 
tered not  the  smallest  shred  of  egotism  or  of  the 
pride  of  knowledge  —  to  make  so  many  allow- 
ances for  the  inevitable  incompleteness  of  his 
work,  when  judged  by  that  standard  of  ideal  per- 
fection which  hr  alone  among  men  was  able  to 
apply  to  it,  as  to  nave  rendered  himself  incapable 
for  the  time  being  of  appreciating  its  real  mag- 
nitude. In  writing  the  "  Origin  of  Species,"  he 
regarded  the  book  as  merely  a  preliminary  outline 
of  his  theory,  which  would  serve  to  prevent  his 
being  forestalled  by  any  one  else  in  the  announce- 
ment of  it,  and  he  made  frequent  allusions  to  the 
larger  and  more  elaborate  treatise  in  which  he 
intended  presently  to  follow  up  the  exposition  and 
to  reinforce  the  argument.  When  I  first  met  Mr. 
Darwin  in  London,  in  1873,  he  told  me  that  he 
was  surprised  at  the  great  fame  which  his  book 
instantly  won,  and  at  the  quickness  with  which  it 
carried  conviction  to  the  minds  of  all  the  men  on 
whose  opinions  he  set  the  most  value.  The  suc- 
cess of  his  theory  was,  indeed,  wonderfully  rapid 
and  complete.  To  understand  him  was  to  agree 
with  him,  and  before  ten  years  more  had  passed 
by,  so  many  able  men  had  become  expounders 
and  illustrators  of  the  theory  of  natural  selection 
'chat  —  as  he  told  mo — it  seemed  no  longer  so 


In  Memoriam:  Charles  Darwin.  361 
necessary  as  it  had  once  seemed  for  him  to  write 
the  larger  and  more  elaborate  treatise.  The 
learned  work  on  the  "  Variation  of  Animals  and 
Plants  nnder  Domestication,"  which  appeared  in 
1868  in  two  octavo  volumes,  formed  the  first  in- 
stallment of  this  long -projected  treatise.  The 
second  part  was  to  have  treated  of  the  variation 
of  animals  and  plants  through  natural  selection ; 
and  a  third  part  would  have  dealt  at  length  with 
the  phenomena  of  morphology,  of  classification, 
and  of  distribution  in  space  and  time.  But  these 
second  and  third  parts  were  never  published. 

I  alluded,  just  now,  to  the  "  unforeseen  circum- 
stance" which  led  Mr.  Darwin  in  1859  to  break 
his  long  silence,  and  to  write  and  publish  the 
"  Origin  of  Species."  This  circumstance  served, 
no  less  than  the  extraordinary  success  of  his  book, 
to  show  how  ripe  the  minds  of  men  had  become 
for  entertaining  such  views  as  those  which  Mr. 
Darwin  propounded.  In  1858  Mr.  Wallace,  who 
was  then  engaged  in  studying  the  natural  history 
of  the  Malay  Archipelago,  sent  to  Mr.  Darwin 
(as  to  the  man  most  likely  to  understand  him)  a 
paper,  in  which  he  sketched  the  outlines  of  a  the- 
ory identical  with  that  upon  which  Mr.  Darwin 
had  so  long  been  at  work.  The  same  sequence 
of  observed  facts  and  inferences  that  had  led  Mr. 


362          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Darwin  to  the  discovery  of  natural  selection  and 
its  consequences  had  led  Mr.  Wallace  to  the  very 
threshold  of  the  same  discovery ;  but  in  Mr.  Wal- 
lace's mind  the  theory  had  by  no  means  been 
wrought  out  to  the  ss>me  degree  of  completeness 
to  which  it  had  been  wrought  in  the  mind  of  Mr. 
Darwin.  In  the  preface  to  his  charming  book  on 
"  Natural  Selection,"  Mr.  Wallace,  with  rare  mod- 
esty and  candour,  acknowledges  that,  whatever 
value  his  speculations  may  have  had,  they  have 
been  utterly  surpassed  in  richness  and  cogency 
of  proof  by  those  of  Mr.  Darwin.  This  is  no 
doubt  true,  and  Mr.  Wallace  has  done  such  good 
work  in  further  illustration  of  the  theory  that  he 
can  well  afford  to  rest  content  with  the  second 
place  in  the  first  announcement  of  it. 

The  coincidence,  however,  between  Mr.  Wal- 
lace's conclusions  and  those  of  Mr.  Darwin  was 
very  remarkable.  But,  after  all,  coincidences  of 
this  sort  have  not  been  uncommon  in  the  history 
of  scientific  inquiry.  Nor  is  it  at  all  surprising 
that  they  should  occur  now  and  then,  when  we 
remember  that  a  great  and  pregnant  discovery 
must  always  be  concerned  with  some  question 
which  many  of  the  foremost  minds  in  the  world 
are  busy  in  thinking  about.  It  was  so  with  the 
discovery  of  the  differential  calculus,  and  ugiin 


In  Memoriam  :   Charles  Darwin,         363 

with  the  discovery  of  the  planet  Neptune.  It  was 
so  with  the  interpretation  of  the  Egyptian  hiero- 
glyphics, and  with  the  establishment  of  the  un- 
dulatory  theory  of  light.  It  was  so,  to  a  consid- 
erable extent,  with  the  introduction  of  the  new 
chemistry,  with  the  discovery  of  the  mechanical 
equivalent  of  heat,  and  the  whole  doctrine  of  the 
correlation  of  forces.  It  was  so  with  the  invention 
of  the  electric  telegraph  and  with  the  discovery 
of  spectrum  analysis.  And  it  is  not  at  all  strange 
that  it  should  have  been  so  with  the  doctrine  of 
the  origin  of  species  through  natural  selection. 
The  belief  that  all  species  have  originated  through 
derivation  from  other  species,  and  not  through 
special  creation,  had  been  held  by  part  of  the 
scientific  world  ever  since  the  time  of  Mr.  Dar- 
win's grandfather,  who  was  one  of  its  earliest  and 
most  eminent  advocates.  Even  those  naturalists 
who  did  not  hold  this  belief  can  hardly  be  said  to 
have  held  any  antagonistic  belief,  inasmuch  as  the 
so-called  "  doctrine  of  special  creations  "  is  not  a 
positive  doctrine  at  all,  but  a  mere  confession  of 
ignorance,  and  was  so  regarded  by  scientific  nat- 
uralists, such  as  Owen,  for  example,  before  1859. 
The  truth  is  that  before  the  publication  of  the 
"  Origin  of  Species  "  there  was  no  opinion  what- 
ever current  respecting  the  subject  that  deserved 


364          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

to  be  called  a  scientific  hypothesis.  That  the 
more  complex  forms  of  life  must  have  come  into 
existence  through  some  process  of  development 
from  simpler  forms  was  no  doubt  the  only  sensi- 
ble and  rational  view  to  take  of  the  subject ;  but 
in  a  vague  and  general  opinion  of  this  sort  there 
is  nothing  that  is  properly  scientific.  A  scientific 
hypothesis  must  connect  the  phenomena  with 
which  it  deals  by  alleging  a  "  true  cause ; "  and 
before  1859  no  one  had  suggested  a  "  true  cause  " 
for  the  origination  of  new  species,  although  the 
problem  was  one  over  which  every  philosophical 
naturalist  had  puzzled  since  the  beginning  of  the 
century.  This  explains  why  Mr.  Darwin's  suc- 
cess was  so  rapid  and  complete,  and  it  also  ex- 
plains why  he  came  so  near  being  anticipated. 
His  long  delay,  however,  in  bringing  forward  his 
theory  had  one  good  result.  The  work  was  so 
thoroughly  done  that,  although  Darwinism  has 
now  for  twenty-three  years  been  one  of  the  chief 
subjects  of  popular  discussion  in  all  the  civilized 
countries  of  the  world,  no  one  as  yet  seems  to 
have  discovered  any  argument  against  the  theory 
of  natural  selection  which  Mr.  Darwin  had  not 
himself  already  foreseen  and  considered  in  the 
first  edition  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species." 

After  an  interval  of  twelve  years  Mr.  Dn.rwin 


In  Memoriam:  Charles  Darwin.         365 

followed  up  the  first  announcement  of  his  general 
theory  with  his  treatise  on  the  "  Descent  of  Man," 
a  book  which  deals  with  a  subject  in  one  respect 
even  more  difficult  than  the  origin  of  species.  In 
his  earlier  book  Mr.  Darwin,  with  masterly  skill, 
brought  together  huge  masses  of  facts,  and  showed 
their  bearings  upon  a  few  general  propositions  re- 
lating to  the  whole  organic  world.  In  the  "  De- 
scent of  Man  "  the  problem  was  different.  Prop- 
ositions of  great  generality,  such  as  had  been 
established  in  the  "  Origin  of  Species,"  served 
here  as  fundamental  principles ;  but  they  had  to 
be  supplemented  by  a  consideration  of  the  enor- 
mously complex  and  heterogeneous  circumstances 
which  attended  the  origination  of  a  particular 
genus.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  in  the  treatment 
of  this  arduous  problem  Mr.  Darwin  showed  no 
less  acuteness  and  grasp  than  had  been  displayed 
in  his  earlier  work. 

In  connection  with  this  problem  of  the  origin  of 
the  human  race,  Mr.  Darwin  announced  the  results 
of  his  extensive  researches  into  the  subject  of  sex- 
ual selection  in  the  animal  kingdom.  Some  time 
before  this,  in  his  treatise  on  the  "  Fertilization 
of  Orchids,"  published  in  1862,  he  had  called  at- 
tention to  the  interdependence  between  the  insect 
world  and  the  world  of  dowers.  Further  research 


366  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

in  this  direction  has  made  it  clear  that  the  beau- 
tiful colours  and  sweet  odours  of  flowers  are  due  to 
selection  on  the  part  of  insects.  The  bright  colours 
and  delicious  perfumes  attract  insects,  who  come 
to  sip  the  nectar,  and  carry  away  on  their  backs 
the  pollen  with  which  to  fertilize  the  next  plant 
they  visit.  Thus  the  fairest  and  sweetest  flowers 
are  continually  selected  to  perpetuate  their  race, 
and  thus  have  insects  and  flowering  plants  been 
developed  in  close  correlation  with  one  another. 

It  was  Mr.  Darwin's  good  fortune  to  live  long 
enough  to  see  his  theory  not  only  adopted  by  all 
competent  naturalists,  but  demonstrated  by  crucial 
evidence  in  the  case  of  at  least  one  genus.  The 
researches  of  Professor  Marsh  into  the  palaeon- 
tology of  the  horse  have  established  beyond  ques- 
tion the  descent  of  the  genus  equus  from  a  five- 
toed  mammal  not  larger  than  a  pig,  and  somewhat 
resembling  a  tapir.  All  the  "  missing  links  "  in 
this  case  have  been  found ;  'and  thus  the  primitive 
barbaric  hypothesis  of  "special  creations"  may 
be  said  to  have  disappeared  forever  from  the  field 
of  natural  history.  It  has  taken  its  place  by  the 
side  of  the  Ptolemaic  astronomy  and  the  dreams 
of  the  alchemists. 

Mr.  Darwin's  latest  books  belong  to  a  period   . 
in  which,  having  lived  to  witness  the  complete 


In  Memoriam:  Charles  Darwin.  367 
success  of  his  great  work,  he  has  employed  his 
time  in  recording  the  results  of  his  researches  on 
many  subsidiary  points,  of  no  little  interest  and 
importance.  The  treatises  on  the  Expression  of 
the  Emotions  in  Man  and  Animals,  on  the  Move- 
ments  and  Habits  of  Climbing  Plants,  on  Insec- 
tivorous Plants,  on  Cross  and  Self  Fertilization, 
on  the  Different  Forms  of  Flowers,  and  on  the 
Formation  of  Vegetable  Mould  through  the  Ac- 
tion of  Worms,  should  be  read  as  models  of  sound 
scientific  method  by  every  one  who  cares  to  learn 
what  scientific  method  is.  They  may  be  counted, 
too,  among  the  most  entertaining  books  of  science 
that  have  ever  been  written  ;  and  the  points  that 
have  been  established  in  them,  taken  in  connec- 
tion with  Mr.  Darwin's  previous  works,  make  up 
an  aggregate  of  scientific  achievement  such  as  has 
rarely  been  equalled. 

It  is  fitting  that  in  the  great  Abbey,  where 
rest  the  ashes  of  England's  noblest  heroes,  the 
place  of  the  discoverer  of  natural  selection  should 
be  near  that  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  Since  the  pub- 
lication of  the  immortal  "  Principia,"  no  single 
scientific  book  has  so  widened  the  mental  horizon 
of  mankind  as  the  "  Origin  of  Species."  Mr.  Dar- 
win, like  Newton,  was  a  very  young  man  when 
his  great  discovery  suggested  itself  to  him.  Like 


368          Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist. 

Newton,  he  waited  many  years  before  publishing 
it  to  the  world.  Like  Newton,  he  lived  to  see  it 
become  part  and  parcel  of  the  mental  equipment 
of  all  men  of  science.  The  theological  objection 
urged  against  the  Newtonian  theory  by  Leibnitz, 
that  it  substituted  the  action  of  natural  causes  for 
the  immediate  action  of  the  Deity,  was  also  urged 
against  the  Darwinian  theory  by  Agassiz ;  and  the 
same  objection  will  doubtless  continue  to  be  urged 
against  scientific  explanations  of  natural  phenom- 
ena so  long  as  there  are  men  who  fail  to  compre- 
hend the  profoundly  theistic  and  religious  truth 
that  the  action  of  natural  causes  is  in  itself  the 
immediate  action  of  the  Deity.  It  is  interesting, 
however,  to  see  that,  as  theologians  are  no  longer 
frightened  by  the  doctrine  of  gravitation,  so  they 
are  already  beginning  to  outgrow  their  dread  of 
the  doctrine  of  natural  selection.  On  the  Sunday 
following  Mr.  Darwin's  death,  Canon  Liddon,  at 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  Canons  Barry  and  Pro- 
thero,  at  Westminster  Abbey,  agreed  in  referring 
to  the  Darwinian  theory  as  "  not  necessarily 
hostile  to  the  fundamental  truths  of  religion." 
The  effect  of  Mr.  Darwin's  work  has  been,  how- 
ever, to  remodel  the  theological  conceptions  of 
the  origin  and  destiny  of  man  which  were  current 
in  former  times.  In  this  respect  it  has  wrought 


In  Memoriam:  Charles  Darwin.        369 

a  revolution  as  great  as  that  which  Copernicus  in- 
augurated and  Newton  completed,  and  of  very 
much  the  same  kind.  Again  has  man  been 
rudely  unseated  from  his  imaginary  throne  in  the 
centre  of  the  universe,  but  only  that  he  may  learn 
to  see  in  the  universe  and  in  human  life  a  richer 
and  deeper  meaning  than  he  had  before  sus- 
pected. Truly,  he  who  unfolds  to  us  the  way  in 
which  God  works  through  the  world  of  phenom- 
ena may  well  be  called  the  best  of  religious 
teachers.  In  the  study  of  the  organic  world,  no 
less  than  in  the  study  of  the  starry  heavens,  is  it 
true  that  "day  unto  day  uttereth  speech,  and 
night  unto  night  showeth  knowledge." 

April,  1882. 

24 


INDEX. 


ABORIGINES  of  America  formerly 
thought  to  be  Mongols  or  ten  tribes 
of  Israel,  148. 

Acacia,  29. 

Accumulation,  effective  desire  of,  218. 

Adapis,  25. 

Afghanistan,  84. 

Africa,  20 ;  not  yet  explored  geologi- 
cally, 33. 

Agassiz,  L.,  68,  369. 

Age  of  the  earth,  15. 

Ahriman,  78. 

Ahura-Mazda,  78,  82. 

Akkadian  empire,  52. 

Albania,  229. 

Albanian  language,  96. 

Albert  of  Brandenburg,  98. 

Albigenses,  262. 

Ale,  Aryan  names  for,  141. 

Alleghanies,  19. 

Allen,  Grant,  186. 

Alligators,  24. 

Almond  and  peach,  357. 

Alps,  19,  23,  28,  38,  69. 

Altaic  languages,  100,  153,  166. 

Alternation  of  climates  in  Pleistocene 
Europe,  37-40,  66. 

Amazulus,  294,  298. 

American  civilization,  319. 

Americans,  average  height  of,  176. 

Anaesthetics,  230. 

Ancestor-worship,  251. 

Anchitherium,  25,  30. 

Anoplotherium,  25. 

Anramainyus,  78,  82. 

Anschar,  261. 

Antarctic  continent,  72. 

Antelope,  25,  29. 

Antiquity  of  life  on  the  earth,  15. 

Antlers,  30,  35. 

Apennines,  23. 

Apes,  30,  35,  313,  315. 

Aphelion,  58. 

Apples,  51. 

Aquinas,  285. 

Arabian  civilization,  189. 


"Arabian  Nights,"  fire-worshippers 
slandered  in,  80. 

Arabic  words  in  Persian,  112. 

Arabs,  53. 

Araucarian  pine,  11. 

Arctic  circle  in  Eocene  and  Miocene 
periods,  73. 

Arctic  Ocean,  33. 

Aria,  a  name  for  Thrace,  91. 

Ariana,  84. 

Arians,  261. 

Ariaramnes,  86. 

Ariarathes,  86. 

Arii,  a  German  tribe,  91. 

Ariobarzanes,  86. 

Ariovistus,  91. 

Arkwright,  SirB.,  205,  207. 

Armenia  once  supposed  to  be  cradle 
of  human  race,  149. 

Armenian  language,  94. 

Armenian  mountains,  73. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  298. 

Arrows  of  Cave-men,  46. 

Artistic  talent  of  Cave-men,  46. 

Arya,  arare,  and  ear,  85. 

Aryan,  properly  a  linguistic  term, 
how  far  applicable  in  an  ethnologi- 
cal sense,  101-103 ;  Professor  Whit- 
ney's objection  to  the  name,  91. 

Aryan  mother-tongue,  reconstruction 
of,  122,  152. 

Aryan  names  for  nearest  relatives, 
127 ;  house,  128 ;  village  and  town, 
129 ;  wall,  130 ;  roof  and  door,  131 ; 
window,  132 ;  cows,  133 ;  horse, 
136 ;  cat,  139 ;  mouse  and  fly,  140 ; 
bee,  honey,  and  ale,  141 ;  sea,  143. 

Aryan  numerals,  128. 

Aryana  Vae'jo,  78-85. 

Aryans,  53-55,  75,  78-146, 163 ;  com- 
pared with  Iroquois,  224. 

Asia,  ethnology  of,  166. 

Assyrian  language,  165. 

Athanasians,  260. 

Atlantic  Ocean,  20,  21. 

Atlantic  ridge,  23,  28,  34,  41. 


372 


Index. 


Atlantosanrus,  12. 

Atomic  theory,  279. 

Atoms  and  molecules,  325. 

Attila,  170. 

Augustus,  '20(5. 

Australia,  348. 

Automatic  character  of  often-repeated 

actions,  308-310. 
Auvergne,  34,  38. 
Avara,  53,  92. 

Average,  deviations  from,  178. 
Avernus,  92. 
Axe,  50. 
Azara,  172. 

BABOON,  30. 

Badger,  49. 

Bagehot,  W.,  186. 

Bakhdhi,  79. 

Baktria,  79,  81. 

Baltic  Sea,  33,  33. 

Bamboo,  34. 

Barbarians,  conversion  of,  261. 

Barbarous  languages,  171. 

Barley,  51. 

Barrows  of  Neolithic  age,  50. 

Basks,  52,  99,  105. 

Batrachians,  earliest,  11. 

Bavaria,  21. 

Beagle,  Voyage  of  the,  342-346. 

Bears,  20,  35,  37,  39,  49. 

Beaver,  39. 

Bedlam,  228. 

Bee,  Aryan  names  for,  141. 

Beech,  24. 

Belief  in  things  coming  out  right  of 
themselves,  221. 

Belisarius,  206. 

Bell,  Sir  C.,  344. 

Benevolent  bigots,  214,  234. 

Berbers,  53. 

Berecynthian  mother,  262. 

Berkeleian  psychology,  328. 

Berkeley,  M.,  344. 

Berwick,  129. 

Bignonia,  29. 

Bigotry  coexisting  with  elevation  of 
character,  214. 

Biography,  how  far  useful  in  sociol- 
ogy, 193-196. 

Birds,  earliest,  12. 

Bison,  37,  39,  45. 

Black  Sea,  33. 

Bleda,  244. 

Blondes,  54,  104. 

Boar,  37,  49. 

Bogomilians,  262. 

Bohemia,  21,  23. 

Bohemian  language,  98. 

Bokhara,  100. 

Bollandists,  211. 

Bopp,  F.,  90. 


Borromeo,  C.,  214. 

Bowditch,  N.,309. 

Brain  and  mind,  278-281,  332-334. 

Brains  of  man  and  ape,  315. 

Brasseur  de  Bourbourg,  149. 

Bread-fruit  tree,  24. 

Breton  language,  96. 

Brigandage,  229. 

Britain,  early  ages  of,  8,  51. 

British   islands   formerly  joined   to 

Gaul  and  Scandinavia,  23,  28,  34, 

41,  49. 

Bronze  age,  54. 
Brunettes,  53,  104. 
Biiclmer,  L.,  271,  277,  283,  334. 
Buckle,  H.  T.,  188,  213-217,  244,  254. 
Bull,  Aryan  names  for,  134. 
Bull's-eye  window,  132. 
Bunsen,  C.  C.  J.,  80. 
Burning  of  Protestants  by  Mary  Tu- 

dor7255. 

Caballm,  the  runner,  138. 

Cabul,  84. 

Cactus,  24. 

Cffisar,  J.,  199,201. 

California,  antiquity  of  man  in,  3G,  40. 

76,  148. 

Calvin,  214,  299. 
Cambrian  period,  11,  69. 
Camel,  26. 
Camphor  tree,  29. 
Causes,  50,  204. 
Canoes,  214. 

Carboniferous  period,  11,  22. 
Carlyle,  T.,  191,  202,  301. 
Carnivora,   24,    351  ;    reached   their 

highest  point  in  Miocene  age,  30. 
Carpathians,  23. 
Carthagenian  fleets  destroyed  in  first 

Punic  war,  207. 
Caspian  Sea,  33. 
Cat,    26;    Aryan    names   for,    139; 

O recks  and  Romans  had  none  do- 
mesticated, 140. 

Catholic  Church  in  the  future,  288. 
Caucasus,  23,  73,  166 ;  languages  of, 

100. 

Cause,  334. 

Causes  of  glaciation,  57-76. 
Cave-bear,  39,  46,  49. 
Cave-men,  42-49,  75  ;  compared  with 

Eskimos,  47. 
Cave-lion,  46,  49. 
Celebes,  173. 
Cervantes,  245. 
Chalk,  22. 
Chamois,  37. 
Chert,  43. 
Chestnut  trees,  24. 
Chinese  race  and  speech,  168. 
Christianity,  persecuted  by  good  em- 


Index. 


373 


perors,  214;  Its  origin,  258;  per- 
manent and  transient  features  of, 
259;  partly  paganized  through 
struggle  with  barbarism,  262  ;  puri- 
fled  by  Luther,  265,  288-293. 

Christmas,  262. 

Church  militant,  260. 

Cinnamon  tree,  29,  34. 

Cirripeds,  345. 

Civet,  29. 

Clan  stage  of  social  organization,  239, 
248. 

Clarendon,  130. 

Classification  of  animals,  352. 

Clifford,  W.  K.,  321-337. 

Climate  of  Eocene  period,  24 ;  of  Mio- 
cene, 29 ;  of  Pliocone,  34 ;  of  Heistc  - 
cene,  37-40,  57-76  ;  of  England,  64. 

Clothes  of  Cave-men,  45  ;  of  Neolithic 
men,  50. 

Club-mosses,  11,22. 

Cockney  misuse  of  h,  115. 

Code  of  honour,  229. 

Codfish,  mental  life  of,  309. 

Coenopithecus,  25. 

Coldest  weather  on  the  earth  in  east- 
ern Siberia,  72. 

Colenso.  J.  W.,  270. 

Colours  of  flowers,  367. 

Columbus,  23,  200. 

Comfort,  growth  of  the  taste  for,  231 . 

Commodus,  214. 

Comparative  method,  88. 

Competition  between  organisms,  358. 

Complexion  of  European  races,  why 
various,  53-55,  101-106. 

Comte,  A.,  190,  271,  274,  289. 

Conifers,  gigantic,  in  Miocene  age,  29. 

Connecticut  Valley,  footprints  in,  12. 

Constantino  the  Great,  8. 

Continents  and  oceans,  20. 

Contract  and  status,  257. 

Cook,  Captain,  173. 

Coral  reefs,  344. 

Corporate  responsibility,  notion  of, 
239-242,  248,  286,  318 ;  its  origin  in 
the  military  necessities  of  primitive 
society,  252  ;  causes  of  its  decline, 
256-258. 

Correlation  of  forces,  280,  3C4. 

Coulanges,  F.,  194. 

Cow,  Aryan  names  for,  133. 

Cow  and  calf,  316. 

Cows  as  money,  134. 

Crane,  29. 

Creation  of  man,  306-320. 

Credit,  living  on,  220. 

Credo  quid  impossibile,  260. 

Cretaceous  period,  14,  22,  23. 

Croatian  language,  98. 

Crocodile,  24. 

Croll,  J.,  17,  20,  57,  76. 


Crnel  punishments  forbidden  In  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States,  228. 

Cruelty  connected  with  primitive  war- 
fare, 223-225  :  diminished  by  in- 
dustrialism, 225-231 ;  its  relation  to 
fear,  252. 

Crusades,  263. 

Crustaceans  in  Cambrian  epoch,  11. 

Cuneiform  inscriptions,  84. 

Cuvier,G.,25,88,  352. 

Cycads,  29. 

Cypress,  24. 

DAGGERS  of  Cave-men,  40. 

Dalvas,  78. 

Dante,  215,  293. 

Danube  in  Miocene  period,  28 ;  mean- 
ing of  the  name,  95. 

Darius  Uystaspes,  80,  84. 

Darwin,  Charles,  17,  147,  175,  177, 
194,  338-370. 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  340,  364, 

Darwin  family,  341. 

Dasi/us,  84. 

Date  of  glacial  period,  57-76. 

Davila,  G.  G.,  245. 

Dawkins,  W.  B.,  27,  30,  35,  42,  43,  48. 

Deciduous  trees,  14,  23. 

Deer,  25,  29,  35,  37,  39,  43 

Dehra  Dhun,  130. 

Deinotherium,  30. 

Dentreath,  Dolly,  last  speaker'  of  th» 
Cornish  language,  96. 

Denudation,  rate  of,  19. 

Descartes,  282. 

Devonian  period,  11. 

Differential  calculus,  363. 

Distaff,  50. 

Distribution  of  plants  and  animals, 
20. 

Dnieper,  95. 

Dog,  26,  50,  356. 

Domestic  animals,  50,  51, 355. 

Domineer,  disposition  to,  233-236. 

Dominic,  Saint,  211,  214. 

J)on,  Keltic  name  for  water,  95. 

Dorians,  54. 

Drake,  Sir  F.,  93. 

Dravidian  languages,  153,  1C5. 

Drawing  of  Cave-men,  46. 

Dresden,  38. 

Dryopithecus,  30-32. 

Duelling,  229. 

Dumbarton,  130. 

Dundee,  130. 

Dunkeld,  130. 

Duration  of  geologic  epochs,  14. 

EAOLE,  29. 

Earth's  crust,  oscillations  of,  20. 
Earth's  orbit,  ellipticity  of,  68. 
Eaeter,  2G2. 


374 


Index. 


Educabilityof  lower  animals,  311-314. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  265. 

Effective  desire  of  accumulation,  218. 

Egypt,  51. 

Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  364. 

Eject  and  object,  328-336. 

Elagabalus,  214. 

Elephant,  34,  37,  39,  43,  49. 

Eliot,  George,  221. 

Elk,  39,  43,  49. 

Elm,  24,  29. 

Embryology,  253. 

English  Channel,  49. 

English  conquest  of  India,  87. 

English  language,  future  of,  93, 1GO. 

Engraving  of  Cave-men,  46. 

Eocene  period,  16,  23-27,  36,  69,  351. 

Eozoon,  10. 

Equinoxes,  precession  of,  59. 

Ericsson,  J.,  204. 

Erin,  91. 

Error,  Laplace's  law  of,  326. 

Eskimos  and  Cave-men,  47. 

Esthonian  language,  100. 

Ethelred,  86. 

Ethelwolf,  86. 

Ethics  and  evolution,  303. 

Etruskans,  53,  99. 

Etymology,  former  unscientific  char- 
acter of,  110. 

Euphrates,  52. 

Europe,  succession  of  races  in,  55, 
104. 

Euskarian  language,  99. 

Evarte,  W.  M.,  294. 

Exclusive  salvation,  215. 

Executions,  private,  230. 

Externality,  332. 

Extravagance,  220. 

FABLE  of  the  Sheep  and  the  Horses, 

124. 
Family  the  unit  of  primitive  society, 

238  ;  origin  of,  249,  316. 
Family  tree,  352. 
Fan-palms,  24,  29. . 
Faroe  Islands,  41. 
Fear  connected  with  cruelty,  252. 
Feather  an&pen,  118. 
fee  and  pecus,  135. 
Ferns,  22. 
Ferrier,  J.  F.,  331. 
Fick,  A.,  126. 
Figs,  29. 

Finality,  craving  for,  292. 
Finland,  21,  38. 
Finnish  language,  100,  166. 
Finuo-Tataric  race,  166. 
Fire,  how  obtained  by  Cave-men,  46. 
Fire-worshippers,  80. 
Fish,  earliest,  11. 
Fitaroy,  Captain,  342. 


Flamingo,  29. 

Flax,  51. 

Flint  flakes  of  river-drift,  43. 

Flints,  chipped,  in  Miocene  age,  31 ; 
in  Pleistocene  age  in  valley  of 
Thames,  40. 

Flowers  and  insects,  366. 

Fly,  Aryan  names  for,  141. 

Fly-catcher,  310. 

Folkmotes,  190. 

Footprints  in  Connecticut  sandstone, 
12. 

Forces,  correlation  of,  280,  364. 

Forth,  river,  41. 

Fox,  37,  45,  49 ;  cannot  climb  trees, 
237,  314. 

Fox-hunting,  229. 

France,  35,  37,  45 ;  her  rivalry  with 
England,  319. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  8,144,  194,  201,  229. 

French  character  injured  by  persecu- 
tion, 263. 

French  language,  97. 

Frenchmen,  race-composition  of,  102. 

Frobisher,  Martin,  93. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  201. 

Fulton,  204. 

Future  life,  291,  337. 

GAEL,  54. 

Gaelic  language,  96. 

Galapagos  Islands,  346. 

Galton,  F..  on  physical  youth,  339. 

Gases,  liquids,  and  solids,  326. 

Gaudry  on  Miocene  man,  31. 

Gaul,  28.  51. 

Gauls,  95. 

Geese,  29. 

Geikie,  A.,  20,  33. 

Geikie,  J.,  20,  37,  41,  67. 

Genesis,  book  of,  149. 

Geniuses,  175. 

Geologic  epochs,  9, 13. 

Geology  as  a  historical  science,  197. 

George  IV.,  9. 

German  language,  98. 

German  Ocean,  21,  28,  34,  38,  41,  49. 

Gete,  97. 

Gibraltar,  39. 

Glacial  epoch,  38-40,  48,  56^6. 

Glaciation  in  early  geologic  periods, 

69. 

Gloves  of  Cave-men,  46. 
Glutton,  37. 
Goat,  50. 

Godfrey  de  Bouillon,  206. 
Gorilla  dreaded  by  lower  animals,  314. 
Gothic  language,  98. 
Goths,  97. 
Gracchus,  C.,  193. 
Grasmere,  143. 
Groat  men,  175-210. 


Index. 


375 


Greek  and  Latin,  89,  96. 
Greenland,  23,  24,  29,  41,  72,  74. 
Gregariousness,  331. 
Gregory  VII.,  188. 
Grief  and  tears,  279. 
Grimm's  law,  115. 
Grinnell  Land,  72. 
Grote,  G.,  270. 
Gulf  stream,  63-65. 
Gum-tree,  24. 
Gutenberg,  206. 

IT&che,  43. 

Hamburg  and  Timbuctoo,  187. 

Hapta  Hendu,  82. 

Hare,  49. 

Have,  conjugated,  113. 

Heat,  carried  by  Gulf  Stream,  64; 
mechanical  equivalent  of,  364. 

Hebrew,  attempts  to  derive  Aryan 
languages  from  it,  89,  110,  150. 

Hecla,  28. 

Hedgehog,  29. 

Hell-fire,  doctrine  of,  226-228. 

Helmholtz,  177. 

Heresiarchs,  no  longer  found  anong 
eminent  men,  269. 

Heresy,  292. 

Hermes,  mutilation  of  his  wayside 
statues  at  Athens,  240. 

Herodotos,  84,  97. 

Hero-worship,  175-210. 

Heroes,  prehistoric,  205. 

Heron,  29. 

Hibernia,  92. 

Himalayas,  39. 

Hipparion,  30,  35. 

Hippotamus,  34,  37,  66. 

Holland,  Spanish  atrocities  In,  225. 

Holland,  Sir  H.,  341. 

Honey,  Aryan  names  for,  141. 

Hooker,  Sir  J.,  344,  350,  360. 

Horns,  30,  35. 

Horse,  25,  35,  37,  50,  351,  350,  367 ; 
Aryan  names  for,  136. 

Horse-tails,  11. 

House,  Aryan  names  for,  128. 

Houses  of  Neolithic  age,  50. 

Humane  feelings  favoured  by  industri- 
alism, 209,  228-231. 

Humber,  41. 

Humboldt,  A.,339. 

Hungarian  language,  100, 166. 

Huns,  98. 

Hunter,  William,  burning  of,- 226. 

Huss,  John,  name  of,  116. 

Hussites,  262. 

Hutton,  115. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  22,  106. 

Hyaena,  26,  35,  37,  43,  49. 

Hygiene,  322 


IAPYOIAN  language,  99. 

Iberians,  53,  75,  99,  105. 

Ibex,  37. 

Icebergs  in  Pliocene  age,  34. 

Iceland,  23,  24,  41. 

Iguanodon,  12. 

Imagination,  its  effect  upon  conduct. 
219. 

Improvidence  of  savages,  218. 

India,  what  we  are  learning  from  It, 
87,  109 ;  non-Aryan  tribes  in,  100. 

Indian  Ocean,  20,  33,  7a 

Indie  class  of  languages,  94. 

Individual  rights  ignored  in  early  so- 
ciety, 238. 

Indo-European,  90. 

Indo-Germanic,  91. 

Indo-Persians,  94. 

Indus,  82. 

Industrial  civilization,  202-210. 

Infallibility,  assumption  of,  235-238. 

Infancy  of  apes,  313. 

Infancy  of  man,  its  meaning,  247, 306.- 
320. 

Infanticide,  250. 

Infidelity,  292. 

Ingersoll,  R.,  241. 

Inquisition,  211,  225,  264. 

Inscriptions  of  Darius,  84. 

Insectivora,  26. 

Insects,  earliest,  11 ;  relations  to  flow, 
ers,  366. 

Insurance  against  fire,  218. 

lonians,  54. 

Iranic  class  of  languages,  94. 

Ireland,  92. 

Irish  Channel,  49. 

Irish  elk,  49. 

Irish,  name  of,  91. 

Iroquois,  224. 

Isabella  of  Castile.  214. 

Italian  language,  97. 

Italy,  28,  34,  35. 

Iver,  53,  91. 

Ivernia,  92. 

Ivy,  29. 

JAMES,  W.,  175-202. 
Japanese  language,  168. 
Jinghis  Khan,  166, 170. 
Jones,  Sir  W.,  90. 
Julian  the  Apostate,  214. 
Jurassic  period,  12,  22,  312. 

KELTIC  languages,  91,  95,  96. 
Kelts,  53,  54,  95, 102. 
Khiva,  100. 
Kjarda  Dhun,  130. 
Knight,  C.,  7. 
Kurdish  language,  94. 
Kymry,  54. 


376 


Index. 


LACORDATRE,  211. 

Lafuente,  245. 

Lake-villages  of  Switzerland,  51. 

La  Mettrie,  277,  283. 

Lancers,  327. 

Language  not  a  sure  index  of  race, 
101 ;  of  savages,  changes  quickly, 
172. 

Laplace,  309,  326. 

Lappish  language,  100. 

Latin  language,  89,  96 ;  spread  of,  over 
western  Europe,  155. 

"  Latin  race,"  101. 

Latin  tribes,  54, 

Laurels,  29. 

Laurentian  period.  10,  20. 

Leibnitz,  369. 

Lemurs,  25. 

Leopard,  37,  39,  43. 

Leasing,  O.  E.,  on  relative  truth  of 
opinions,  212. 

Lettish  language,  93, 

Leverrier,  59. 

Leyden,  130. 

Ligurians,  53. 

Lindens,  29. 

Linear  classification  of  animals  im- 
practicable, 352. 

Lion,  37,  39>  sabre-toothed,  30,  35, 
39. 

Liquids,  gases,  and  solids,  327. 

Lithuanian  language,  98. 

Lobatchevsky,  337. 

Lollards,  264. 

London,  130. 

Loom,  50. 

Louer,  117. 

Lowest  organisms  especially  perisha- 
ble, 11. 

Lugduniun,  130. 

Luther,  M.,  242,  264,  2C7. 

Lyell,  Sir  C.,  342,  345,  3GO. 

Lynx,  35. 

Lyons,  34,  130. 

Lysander,  193. 

MACAULAY,  T.  B.,  194. 

Machairodns,  30,  35,  39. 

Madrid,  245. 

Magdeburg,  225. 

Magian  religion,  80. 

Magnolia,  29,  34. 

Maine,  Sir  H.  8.,  144,  147,  194,  238. 

Malta,  39. 

Mammals,  earliest,  12 :  in  Eocene,  24- 
27;  in  Miocene,  29;  in  Pliocene, 
34 ;  in  Pleistocene,  37. 

Mammoth,  45,  49. 

Man,  not  found  in  Eocene,  27 ;  doubt- 
ful in  Miocene,  30-33 ;  found  in  1'li- 
ocene  in  Portugal  and  California, 
86;  in  river-drift,  39-44;  in  caves, 


42-48 ;  significance  of  his  great  an- 
tiquity, 76  ;  origin  of,  306-320,  366. 

Manatee,  31. 

Mandshus,  167. 

Maple,  24,  29,  34 

Marcus  Antoninus,  214. 

Margiana,  81. 

Marmot,  40. 

Marsh,  O.  C.,  12,  368. 

Marsupials,  14,  24. 

Mary  Tudor,  254. 

Mastodon,  30,  35. 

Materialism,  272-283,  332-336. 

Maurer,  194. 

Mead,  141. 

Meat,  how  cooked  by  Cave-men,  45. 

Mecca,  competition  of  bards  at,  162, 

Medes,  84. 

"Mediterranean  Sea"  of  Cretaceous 
period,  22. 

Mental  life  of  warm-blooded  animals, 
312. 

Merv,  81. 

Mesopithecus,  31. 

Midget,  141. 

Mildness  of  modern  manners,  209. 

Military  discipline  of  primitive  soci- 
ety, 251. 

Mill,  J.  8.,  192,  235. 

Millet,  51. 

Million,  how  to  frame  a  conception 
of,  17. 

Mind-stuff,  336. 

Minokhired,  84. 

Miocene  period,  24,  27^33,  36,  69. 

Mississippi  valley,  drainage  of,  18. 

Missouri  Compromise,  8. 

Mole,  29. 

Molecules  and  atoms,  325. 

Mollusks  in  Cambrian  period,  11 ;  in 
Eocene,  24. 

Mommsen,  T.,  201. 

Mongols,  106,  263. 

Monkeys,  infancy  of,  313 ;  teachable- 
ness of,  314. 

Monsoons,  74. 

Moors,  53. 

Moral  progress,  214-222. 

Morals  and  evolution,  303. 

Moriscoes  expelled  from  Spain,  243- 
246,254. 

Morphology,  353. 

Mortar  and  pestle,  50. 

Mortillet  on  Miocene  man,  32. 

Moscow,  ^8. 

Mountains  as  condensers,  71. 

Mouse,  Aryan  names  for,  140. 

Miiller,  Max,  91. 

Muru,  79,  81. 

Musk-sheep,  37,  39,  40,  42,  48. 

Mussulman  civilization,  189. 

Myrtle,  2». 


Index. 


377 


NATURAL  selection  could  not  imnided 

have  originated  mankind,  307. 
Necklaces  of  Cave-men,  46. 
Necrolemur,  25. 
Neolithic  men  identical  with  Iberians, 

52. 

Neptune,  discovery  of,  364. 
New  chemistry,  364. 
New  England  scenery  due  to  glaciers, 

68. 

New  Zealand,  348. 
Newgate  prison,  228. 
Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  102,  338,  368. 
Nice,  dialect  of,  158. 
Nineveh,  winged  bulls  of,  173. 
Norsemen  thought  it  shameful  to  die 

in  one's  bed,  225. 
North  America   formerly  joined   to 

Europe,  23,  28,  41,  148. 
North  and  south  poles,  64. 
Norway,  34,  41. 

OAKS,  14,  24,  29,  34. 

Object  and  eject,  328-336. 

Object,  social,  330. 

Ocean-beds  permanent,  20. 

Ocean  currents,  C3-G5. 

Old  Aryan  language,   reconstruction 

of,  122,  152. 
Old  Stone  age,  42-49. 
Opossum,  29. 

Orang-outang,  infancy  of,  313. 
Orbit  of  the  earth,  58. 
Orchards    of   Neolithic    Switzerland, 

51. 

Oriel  window,  131, 
Origins,  present  age  wrapped  in  the 

study  of,  284. 
Ormnzd,  78. 

Orthodoxies?,  decomposition  of,  269. 
Oscan  language,  97. 
Oscillations  of  earth's  crust,  20. 
Ossetian  language,  94. 
Owen,  R.,  344,  364. 
Ox,  35,  50. 
Oxus,  81. 

PACIFIC  Ocean,  20. 

Palaeolithic  age,  42-49. 

Paley  on  Homeric  poems,  270. 

Palfrey,  137. 

Pali,  94. 

Palmetto,  20. 

Palms,  14,  24,  34. 

Pandanus,  24. 

Panther,  35. 

Parker,  Theodore,  227,  270. 

Paroquet,  29. 

Parsis  of  Bombay,  80,  94. 

Peach  and  almond,  357. 

Pears,  51. 

Peas,  51. 


Pmmia  and  peats,  135. 

Pelican,  29. 

Pen  and  feather,  118. 

Pepin,  206. 

Perfume  of  flowers,  367. 

Perihelion,  58. 

Permian  period,  11,  70. 

Perpetual  snow,  61. 

Persecution,  211-267,  286,  318. 

Persian  Gulf,  33. 

Persian  language,  94 ;  full  of  Arabic 

words,  112. 

Persians  and  Hindus,  83-85. 
Peter  the  Hermit,  192. 
Pferd,  strange  history  of,  137. 
Pheasant,  29. 
Philadelphia,  39. 
Philip  II.  burns  heretics  to  celebrate 

his  nuptials,  225. 

Philology  a  historical  science,  125. 
Piano,  learning  to  play  the,  308. 
Pigs,  35,  50. 
Pigeons,  356. 

Pike,  46. 

Pines,  14,  22,  24. 

Plasticity  of  infancy,  313. 

Pleistocene  period,  37-49. 

Pliocene  period,  33-36. 

Plums,  51. 

Plutarch,  193. 

Po,  19. 

Polish  language,  98. 

Polished  stone  tools,  50-53. 

Political  economy,  195. 

Poplar,  29,  34. 

Portugal,  antiquity  of  man  in,  35,  40, 
76. 

Portuguese  language,  97. 

Positivism,  289. 

Pottery,  43,  45. 

Prakrit,  94. 

Precession  of  equinoxes,  59. 

Priesthood,  need  of,  in  early  ages  of 
Christianity,  261. 

Priestley,  Joseph,  275,  340. 

Primary  period,  9,  11. 

Primates,  25. 

Primitive  society,  ferocity   of,  223- 
225. 

Progress! venoss,  human,  306-320. 

Pronunciation,  differences  of,  114. 

Protective  tariffs,  195. 

Protestantism,  its  full  meaning,  265, 
288,  293. 

Provencal  language,  97. 

Pnmpelly,  R.,  72. 

Punjab,  .82. 

Puppets,  a  world  of,  282. 

Puritans,  266. 

Pushtu  language,  94. 

QUAETZITB,  43. 


378 


Index. 


RABBIT,  37,  49. 

Recent  period,  49. 

Reindeer,  37,  39,  42,  45,  46,  49,  66. 

Religions,    wherein  they   agree  and 

differ,  296 ;  essential  truths  of,  299. 
Renan,  E.,  alluded  to,  212. 
Representativeness,  221. 
Reptiles,  12. 
Rhine,  41. 
Rhinoceros,  29,  35,  37,  39 ;  big-nosed, 

40,  42,  57  ;  woolly,  37,  45,  49. 
Ribeiro's  discovery  of  Pliocene  man  in 

Portugal,  35. 
Rigidity  of  mind,  236. 
River-drift  men,  39.  42-44,  75. 
Rocky  Mountains,  19,  39. 
Rodents,  26. 
Roman  Empire,  199. 
Roman  jurisprudence,  256. 
Romanic  languages,  97  ;  how  they  grew 

from  Latin,  157. 
Rome,  significance  of  its  conquests, 

25C. 

Rubinstein,  A.,  26,  309. 
Rudimentary  organs,  353. 
Rumausch  language,  97. 
Rupee  of  Bengal,  135. 
Russia,  33,  51. 

Russian    ecclesiastical   services   con- 
ducted in  Old  Bulgarian  language, 

80. 

BABKE-toothed  lion,  30,  35,  39. 

Salmon,  46. 

Samoyedic  race,  166. 

Sandalwood,  29. 

Sandwich,  129. 

Sanskrit,  85,  96. 

Saporta,  Count,  24. 

Sapta  Sindhavas,  82. 

Saracens,  2G3. 

Sarasvati,  82. 

Savages,  their  want  of  forethought, 

218  ;  their  rigidity  of  mind,  237. 
Scandinavia,  21,  23,  38,  51 ;  languages 

of,  98. 
Scepticism,  its  effect  in  diminishing 

persecution,  216. 
Scherer,  E.,  211. 
Schism  of  Zoroastrians,  83. 
Schlegel,  F.,  90. 
Schleicher,  A.,  123. 
"  School  "  of  Spencerians,  181. 
Schurz,  C.,294. 
Scot  and  scot-free,  135. 
Scotch    divines  of  seventeenth  con- 

tury,  216. 

Scotland,  23,  28,  34,  38. 
Scottish  scenery  due  to  glaciers,  68. 
Sea,  Aryan  names  for,  143. 
Sea  between   Europe   and  Asia,  33, 

73. 


Seal,  46. 

Secondary  period,  9, 12. 

Sedimentary  rocks,  18. 

Selection  of  variations,  356. 

Semi-human  man,  31. 

Semitic  languages,  153,  162 

Semnopithecus,  31. 

Serbian  language,  98. 

Servetus,  Michael,  299. 

Seville,  245. 

Sexual  selection,  366. 

Shakespeare,  179,  192,  232. 

Sheep  and  the  Horses,  fable  of,  124. 

Shetlands,  34,  41. 

Siberia,  33,  72,  166. 

Silures,  53. 

Silurian  period,  11,  21,  70. 

Simultaneous  discoveries,  363. 

Six  in  Hebrew  and  Sanskrit,  151. 

Skin-scraper,  43. 

Slavs,  54,  93. 

Slykick  force,  335. 

Snow,  difficulty  of  melting,  61,  71. 

Social  object,  330. 

Sociology  and  history,  197-200. 

Sogdiana,  81,  84. 

Solids,  liquids,  and  gases,  327. 

Soul,  conscious  existence  of,  after 
death,  291,  337. 

South  Georgia,  72. 

South  Shetland,  72. 

Southern  pole  colder  than  northern, 
64. 

Spain,  22 ;  ruinous  effects  of  expul- 
sion of  Moriscoes,  245. 

Spanish  language,  97. 

Spectrum  analysis,  364. 

Speech  no  sure  index  of  race,  101. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  nature  of  social 
science,  183 ;  on  the  influence  of 
great  men,  183-198  ;  on  ontology, 
283 ;  immensity  of  his  work,  295 ; 
on  mind  and  matter,  335. 

Spitzbergen,  23,  24,  34,  72. 

Spontaneous  variations,  175. 

Sportsmen,  229. 

Squirrel,  29. 

Status  and  contract,  257. 

Stephanus  of  Byzantium,  91. 

Stone  age,  Old,  42-49 ;  New,  50-53. 

Stone  hold  of  Newgate,  228. 

Stone  tools  of  Cave-men,  46. 

Stubbs,  W.,  194. 

Submergence  in  Eocene  period,  23  ;  in 
Miocene,  28. 

Sugdha,  78,81. 

Summer,  why  warmer  than  winter, 
58. 

Survivals,  doctrine  of,  147. 

Switzerland,  22,  28,  51. 

Swords  no  longer  worn,  229. 

Symbols  of  faith,  260. 


Index. 


379 


TAHTTIAN  language,  rapid  changes  in, 

Tapir',  29,  35,  351. 

Target,  distribution  of  shots  at,  178. 

Tartar  and  Tatar,  167. 

Tataric  languages,  100, 166. 

Tears  and  grief,  279. 

Telegraph,  364. 

Tennyson,  A.,  quoted,  247. 

Tertiary  period,  9, 10, 12,  14,  36,  69. 

Tertullian,  2GO. 

Teutonic  character  of  English  speech, 

112. 

Teutons,  54,  97. 
Thames,  37,  41. 
Theological  renaissance,  285. 
Thessaly,  229. 
Thomson,  Sir  W.,  on  ago  of  the  earth, 

15. 

Thumb,  Tom,  176. 
Thun,  130. 

Thnbuctoo  and  Hamburg,  187. 
Tune,  geologic,  14, 16. 
Thnur,  1C7, 170. 
Torture,  226. 

Town,  Aryan  names  for,  129. 
Town-meetings,  194. 
Trade-winds,  how  caused,  63. 
Trajan,  206. 
Tree-ferns,  14. 
Triassic  period,  12,  22,  69. 
Tribal  stage  of  social  organization,  239, 

248. 

Trinity,  260,  299. 
Trollope,  A.,  229. 
Trout,  46. 
Tungusians,  167. 
Turanians,  86,  100. 
Turkish  language,  100,  166. 
Turkish  race,  167. 
Turtle,  mental  life  of,  309, 
Tutelar  deities,  251. 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  147. 
Tyne,  41. 

ULMLAS,  198,  261. 

Umbrian  language,  97. 

Uncivilized  tribes,  change  their  speech 

quickly,  172. 

Undulatory  theory  of  light,  364. 
Ungulata,  26. 
Unitarians,  270. 

Unity,  religious,  246,  286,  289-293. 
Unknowable,  302. 
Upheavals,  19. 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  52. 
Ural  Mountains,  33. 
Urus,  47,  49. 

Variations  hi  intelligence,  314. 
Veda,  79. 
Velocities  of  molecules,  326. 


Vendidad,  78,  82,  84. 

Veredus.   the  Low-Latin  post-horse. 

137. 

Verification,  290. 

Viking,  meaning  of  the  word,  129. 
Village,  Aryan  names  for,  129. 
Vines  of  Greenland  in  Miocene  ace.  29. 

74. 

Virgin  armed  with  knives,  226. 
Virgin,  worship  of,  262. 
Visceral  movements  organized  before 

birth,  310. 
Volcanic  heat,  action  of,  on  oldest 

rocks,  11 ;  islands,  344. 
Volcanoes  hi  Scotland  and  Wales,  28. 

34. 

Voltaire,  192. 
Vowel-change  in  Aryan  speech,  121. 

WALES,  28. 

Wall,  Aryan  names  for,  130. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  20,  61,  72, 73, 313,  350, 

362. 

Wallachian  language,  97. 
Walnut,  14. 
Warfare,  diminution  of,  208, 212,  228- 

231,  319. 

Watt,  James,  205-207,  341. 
Weapons,  carrying  of,  forbidden  by 

law,  229. 
Weasel,  29. 

Wedgwood,  Hensleigh,  341. 
Wedgwood,  Josiah,  341. 
Welsh  language,  96. 
Whale,  46. 
Wheat,  61. 
Whitney,  J.  D.,  36. 
Whitney,  W.  D.,  91,  144. 
William  the  Conqueror,  8. 
Willows,  24, 34. 
Windermere,  143. 
Window,  Aryan  names  for,  132. 
Witanagemot,  196. 
Wolf,  35,  37,  49. 
Wright,  C.,  334. 
Wundt,  W.,  337. 

XIMENES,    Cardinal,    his    bonfire    of 
books  alluded  to,  165. 

YAKUTSK,  summer  temperature  of,  72. 
Yellow  race  in  Asia,  169-171. 
Yew-trees,  24. 
You.  my  conception  of,  329. 
Yule-tide,  262. 

ZAKATHUSTBA,  81. 
Zend  language,  85,  94, 96. 
Zendavesta,  78,  80,  82. 
Zoroaster,  81. 


THE  WRITINGS  OF 
JOHN   FISKE. 


THE   DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA. 

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America.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  most  important  single  portion 
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THE  AMERICAN   REVOLUTION. 

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which  the  two  volumes  now  published  are  no  more  than  a 
third  or  a  fourth  part,  make  it  a  book  of  new  and  permanent 
interest.  —  Springfield  Republican. 

CIVIL  GOVERNMENT  IN  THE  UNITED 
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ful work   than  in  its  preparation.  —  The   Congregationalist 
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THE   CRITICAL   PERIOD   OF  AMERI- 
CAN  HISTORY.     1783-1789. 

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THE     BEGINNINGS     OF    NEW     ENG- 
LAND; 

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parties  in  controversy.  .  .  .  The  whole  book  is  novel  and 
fresh  in  treatment,  philosophical  and  wise,  and  will  not  be  laid 
down  till  one  has  read  the  last  page,  and  remains  impatient 
for  what  is  still  to  come.  — Boston  Post. 

THE   WAR   OF   INDEPENDENCE. 

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man  of  consummate  genius  could  have  written.  — Mrs.  CARO- 
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The  story  of  the  Revolution,  as  Mr.  Fiske  tells  it,  is  one  of 
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traces  them  with  the  utmost  precision,  and  tells  the  whole 
story  in  a  masterly  fashion.  His  little  volume  will  be  a  text- 
book for  older  quite  as  much  as  for  young  readers.  —  Chris- 
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theism  and  causation  than  other  parts.  It  is  hopeless  to  at- 
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and  probably  you  would  not  care  to  hear.  It  pleased  me  to 
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ing even  on  abstruse  subjects,  and  has  enabled  him  to  play 
the  same  part  in  popularizing  Spencer  in  this  country  that 
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thain  in  England.  The  same  qualities  appear  to  good  ad- 
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A  perusal  of  this  thorough  work  cannot  be  too  strongly 
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